KNOX — A fire Monday night from a power surge on a wire has left at least eight homes in the Green Acres trailer park here without power, including heat. After not responding for nearly a day, the park’s owner has had a contractor come to repair the problem, which he said would be fixed by Friday.

Jessica Clure, who has lived in the park for 13 years, said she, her husband, and her six children would be staying in a hotel that her mother had paid for until Friday. After that, should the power still be out, she’s not sure where she’ll go.

The temperature on Monday night dipped to 19 degrees and on Tuesday and Wednesday was still below freezing; with wind chill on Wednesday, it felt like 2 degrees.

“The whole thing is fried,” said Amanda Garry, another resident of the trailer park.

The fire near a utility pole occurred around 9 or 10 p.m. on Monday night, said Garry, and was put out in about 20 minutes after someone in the park used a fire extinguisher.

Harry Courtright said that he and other park residents at first thought fireworks were going off, then they saw sheriff’s patrol cars.

“I thought somebody was lighting up Roman candles,” he said.

Albany County Sheriff’s Inspector Charles Higgins said that a call came in about a telephone pole on fire that was approximately 20 feet away from a shed and propane tanks. Sheriff’s Deputy Matthew White arrived on scene before anyone else had, and put out the fire with an extinguisher stored in his patrol car.

Garry said the power has been out in her home since then.

“I had to bundle up with a blanket last night,” she said on Tuesday afternoon.

Garry tried to contact her landlord whom she said did not answer her phone calls; eventually her calls went immediately to voicemail, she said.

Flower, who arrived at the park around 4 p.m. on Tuesday, lives in Rotterdam, and said he had been suffering from migraines, which is why his phone was turned off. He owns two other parks as well, he said.

After not hearing from Flower, Garry then tried to call the Knox Town Hall and reached assessor Russ Pokorny. Looking for help for the residents, Pokorny said he called the sheriff’s office and was told a paper could be provided for a court complaint, which wouldn’t be of immediate help to the residents. Pokorny also called the Knox building inspector and was told, he said, that all the inspector could do was say people couldn’t live there until electricity was restored. So then Pokorny called The Enterprise

Higgins said it would be likely that the office would advise someone on how to file a complaint for small claims court.

Nate Stone, a media representative from National Grid, said that the company was informed of a fire and an outage at the electric box, and that the responsible party in this case would be the property owner. He could not confirm if National Grid workers did visit the site of the fire, but said it is standard procedure to do so, and that the company is required by law to shut down power to a damaged line until it can be repaired.

Garry also contacted the Albany County Sheriff’s Office, who gave her a form to file a complaint against her landlord. Both the town and sheriff had tried to call Flower, but were unsuccessful.

Garry said Pokorny’s wife, Amy Pokorny, who is a town councilwoman, and the town supervisor, Vasilios Lefkaditis, arrived at the trailer park on Tuesday. Garry was brought to the town hall, where she stayed until she could find somewhere else to go. She lives with her boyfriend and three cats, and the couple is also caring for a neighbor’s dog.

According to Willie VanHoesen, who lives in Green Acres, several residents own trailers and pay rent to stay in the park. Because they own the trailer, they must fix “above-ground” items while the landlord fixes utilities not in the trailers themselves. According to a state report on manufactured homes tenants’ rights, most residents of manufactured homes own their home and rent the land.

Another time, about two weeks ago, part of the wire caught fire, VanHoesen said, but National Grid was responsible for fixing it, because of where it was located. Stone confirmed that on March 12 a pole was sparking at the park. He could not confirm if the company fixed the line, but said in this case workers likely would have set up a temporary line and would give five days to have an electrician repair it.

“It’s unacceptable,” Garry said of being without electricity. She said she does not know what she will do or where she will stay while she waits to have heat again.

Russell Pokorny said a licensed inspector alone can approve repairs. The town was originally going to bring in its own electrician, Rick Fortuin, who, like Pokorny, is member of Knox’s volunteer fire department. Fortuin, Pokorny, and fire Chief Bill Vinson had come to look into the electrical problem shortly before Flower and his contractor, Jeffrey S. Hayden of Duanesburg, arrived.

From looking at the electrical boxes that are now destroyed, Pokorny presumed eight homes are currently without power.

VanHoesen, a resident of the park for the past eight years, has a generator and a wood stove to heat and power his home. He lives with his wife and two sons.

His mother, Julia VanHoesen, a park resident of six years, is currently using a kerosene heater to stay warm and has put blankets over her fish tanks to try to keep the fish alive. She lives alone, but her grandson and the family’s dog, Winston, were keeping her company on Tuesday.

“They thought it wasn’t safe down in Selkirk,” she said, dryly, of her family urging her to move to Knox. She’s not sure what she will do if the power continues to stay off, as it’s not safe to continuously run the kerosene heater. But, she said, she couldn’t leave her animals or her home, despite one of her grandsons inviting the entire family to his home in Rotterdam.

“Going some place, that would be the last option,” she said. “I just hope they get it fixed.”

One family who lost power had little concern. They were moving out that day.

Willie VanHoesen said it was unusual for Flower not to answer his phone.

“He’s a good guy,” he said.

Courtright agreed, saying at the last fire, the landlord had arrived within half an hour.

This is the third fire to have occurred in the park. Hayden said a problem with the wires was causing a surge to occur, which started the fire. He said he would install new wires and put up two 4-by-4-foot pieces of wood to mount the meters on. National Grid would have to put in the new electric boxes, as well as turn the power back on after having a licensed inspector approve Hayden’s work, he said. Stone confirmed that an inspector would have to give approval, and said that National Grid would then send in workers to inspect the power lines and turn on the power if it was deemed fixed. He said that the company owns the meters and would be replacing them, but had yet to see a work order for them on Wednesday afternoon, meaning it was likely the contractor had not completed his work.

“Their problem’s not that big right here,” said Hayden, who seemed confident on Tuesday afternoon that the burned-out wires and electric boxes could be fixed by the next day or two.

In the meantime, said Russell Pokorny, displaced residents can stay at the Rock Road Chapel in Knox. It appeared that no one would be staying there Tuesday night, he said, as it seemed most had made other arrangements.

At Tuesday night’s Knox Town Board meeting, Lefkaditis said, “Today we had a mini emergency...Everyone worked extremely well together.”

The town is working on emergency preparedness. The Knox Town Hall is a designated emergency shelter but it does not have a big kitchen. The Reformed Church across the street “has a very nice kitchen,” Lefkaditis said, but does not have a generator “so the kitchen is useless” during a power outage.

He suggested state Senator George Amedore might be able to secure funds to buy a generator for the church, making the church kitchen functional for emergency use. The Knox firehouse is to be used by first responders during an emergency, Lefkaditis said.

He also said that generators typically have a week’s worth of fuel and an agreement might be worked out for a long-term emergency to have residents sheltered at the Rock Road Chapel, which has a generator, for a week after the town hall’s generator runs out of fuel.

The current emergency, Lefkaditis said, affected 10 or 15 residents. “If we have 100 people,” he concluded, “how do we cook with hotplates?”

Later in the meeting, the board did not approve the annual renewal for Green Acres as it did for Country Knolls trailer park. Rather, the owner of Green Acres is to meet with the board in closed session before its next meeting, on April 11.

Melissa Hale-Spencer wrote about the Knox Town Board meeting.