A raven knocked out power for hundreds of customers in the resort town of Girdwood, according to Chugach Electric.
Read more Raven likely culprit in Girdwood power outage, utility says
Chugach received a report at about 8 a.m. Friday that an outage was impacting the entire community, according to a social media post.
A raven made contact with the wiring inside a current transformer, triggering the outage, Chugach spokeswoman Julie Hasquet said.
“That caused a cascading series of events where it damaged the transformer, the control wiring from the transformer, and damage was done all the way into the Girdwood substation circuit switcher, which supplies Girdwood,” she said.
The raven died as a result, Hasquet said.
A crew arrived in Girdwood at about 9:45 a.m., and Hasquet estimated it would take eight hours to assess and repair the damage.
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“It’s not just a simple remove the raven, fix it right there,” Hasquet said. “There are several points of contact or damage, if you will, that need to be repaired, including into the circuit switcher that supplies the Girdwood substation.”
It’s not uncommon for small animals like squirrels and birds to trigger smaller outages, but this one is more severe, Hasquet said.
“I think what is unusual is just the extensive amount of damage that was caused by the initial contact,” she said. “Some wires were burned, and then other parts of the system were damaged as well.”
Chugach Electric serves just under 2,000 customers in the Girdwood area, according to an outage map.
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