IDAHO FALLS — Idaho Falls Power officials say a weather-related equipment malfunction is to blame for the start of a power pole fire on South Skyline Road around 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, which knocked out power to more than 1,800 homes located on the west side of town.

    The Idaho Falls Fire Department’s lead investigator, Joe Nichols, determined that a house fire that sparked around 8 p.m. was not caused by the pole that fell on the home’s service line. No one was injured.

    However, the electricity was out for about 11 hours for some customers. Crews restored power to all but 46 customers at 10:19 p.m. Power was restored to the remaining individual customers at 2:20 a.m. Power was ultimately restored to all customers by 6:20 a.m. Thursday.

    Subsequent to the initial restoration of power, pockets of outages began to occur in the Alice Dickson subdivision. These were related to what is called “cold-load pickup,” which occurs when circuits became overloaded due to a sudden demand for power once it is restored.

    For future reference, customers are advised to shut off their appliances and turn down electrical heating and cooling units when an outage occurs to prevent this from happening.

    The cause of the house fire remains under investigation.

    “The house fire and the equipment malfunction have not been ‘completely separated,’” Nichols said in a news release. “But, we ruled out the suggestion that the pole had fallen on their wires.”

    Nichols said he will be able to determine the exact cause of the house fire after an electrical engineer from the homeowner’s insurance company inspects the damage.