Squirrel menaceSquirrel causes explosion, knocks out Connecticut town’s power

The ubiquitous squirrel sometimes causes havoc // Source: lotrplaza.com

Last week more than 14,000 homes in Greenwich, Connecticut were left without power after a squirrel managed to find its way into an electrical substation and caused an explosion that sent flames shooting 150 feet into the air.

Roughly one half of Connecticut Power and Light’s 27,910 customers suffered from blackouts including a police station and half the town’s traffic lights as a result of the squirrel.

The police officers at the affected police station were left without power when their backup generators failed to kick in, but they still had access to their emergency phone lines. In addition, commuters were hit with an even more chaotic morning commute due to the traffic light outages, and some people were trapped in elevators.

Kim Eves, a spokeswoman for the Greenwich school district, said five schools were affected as well, but ‘they all had generators, and by the time we checked in with all the schools, power was back on.”

Mitch Gross, a spokesman for the power utility, said each substation is equipped with devices to keep animals out, but in this case they failed to deter the squirrel.

“Sometimes they get in where they shouldn’t, still, and that’s exactly what happened,” Gross explained.  

According to Gross, after “walking where it shouldn’t have and [triggering] the problem,” the squirrel was struck by tens of thousands of volts of electricity and died instantly.

Cynthia Hodges, a reporter with the Chicago Examiner, notes that the security of our nation’s power supply should be carefully examined if a determined squirrel was able to cause this much damage at a power plant.

As a result of the incident, “one can’t help but wonder how vulnerable the nation’s utilities remain to intrusions by terrorists?” Hodges asks.