A City of Ames electrical pole caught fire shortly after 11 p.m. Wednesday night outside the parking lot of the 40s cluster of Frederiksen Court. A crack of lightning from the night’s thunderstorm could have caused the small blaze, said Lt. Tom Hackett of the Ames Fire Department, but the cause has not been confirmed.

Randy Larabee, chief engineer of electrical distribution for facilities planning and management, said the electrical pole belongs to the City of Ames and does not service Frederiksen Court. Larabee said the only on-campus buildings serviced by the affected lines are the Ames Laboratories facilities, and they were likely not to be impacted.

The fire smoldered through most of the pole as members of the Ames Fire Department waited for confirmation that the lines had been shut off. The flames flared up shortly after midnight on Thursday and were quickly extinguished.

The Ames Fire Department returned to the scene around 1 a.m. Thursday to extinguish a small flare-up.

“The previous fire weakened the pole to the point that it had snapped off and there was a little pocket of burning,” Hackett said.

Hackett confirmed that the power was still shut off at the time of the flare-up, and that there was no danger to the affected area.