Alaska Power and Telephone says “animal vandalism” was the cause of two of three power outages that all happened within the last three weeks.
The frequency of outages recently has been unusual, AP&T’s local manager Darren Belisle in Skagway said, but the timing seems to be a coincidence.
The most recent outage was about 3 p.m. Monday.
A raven got into AP&T’s main power transformer in Haines, Belisle said.
The corvid interference caused the entire Upper Lynn Canal power grid to go dark for about 15 minutes.
The raven did not survive the encounter.
The transformer already has bird protection, but the power company is looking into putting additional deterrents in place, Belisle said.
An outage on Aug. 19 that cut out power to about 140 Haines customers also was sparked by a bird.
Belisle said it appears an eagle carrying a salmon hit a power line at about mile 1.5 on the Haines Highway. That outage lasted about a half-hour.
Just a few days later, on Aug. 22, there was an equipment failure at the Skagway hydropower plant.
Belisle said “one computer quit talking to another one.”
Skagway and Haines customers lost power for about 15 minutes until AP&T workers could turn on the back-up diesel system. Belisle says the equipment problems are now repaired.
If customers are having issues with power surges in their homes, Belisle says they should check their grounding and call AP&T if they need help.
