Fire crews responding to call at a northeast Roanoke County residence Thursday got a shock along the way -- they received reports of fire from four other homes in the same neighborhood.

"We were figuring we had multiple houses with multiple fires," said Greg St. Clair, the volunteer chief for the Hollins fire station.

St. Clair said crews from Roanoke, Roanoke County and Vinton arrived and discovered that the incident was the result of a transformer that blew about 7:10 p.m. The malfunction overloaded appliances and other devices in three houses in the 5700 block of Capito Street and two houses in the 5700 block of Halcun Drive.

"We were expecting the worst, but it turned out no homes actually had a structure fire," he said.

He said sparks from the transformer also caused a small ground fire near the utility pole, but a resident was able to extinguish it himself. A girl, who had been in the shower at the time of the incident, complained of receiving an electrical shock but she was examined at the scene and did not require treatment.

"We did have some visible damage from some of the homes and some burned up TVs, burned up refrigerators, a dishwasher and some electrical wiring," St. Clair said.

He estimated the damage at $10,000.

Appalachian Power Co. removed the meters from the houses until they can change out the transformer, he said.

-- Neil Harvey