An early-morning power outage in Philadelphia Monday was caused by an unexpected culprit: a raccoon that made its way into a local electrical substation.
According to Kirk Morgan with Philadelphia Utilities, the animal entered the city’s north substation, knocking one of the city’s two substations offline and causing a widespread outage that lasted about 2½ to 3 hours.
“When one [substation] goes out, we can reroute the load to the other one and still carry the city,” Morgan explained. “But it took some doing, and it affected the whole city for a little while because knocking out a substation is a big deal.”
Utility crews were able to restore power within roughly an hour, though Morgan noted that some isolated locations experienced lingering, minor issues as repairs continued.
He added that animal-related outages are not unusual.
“Raccoons and squirrels cause us a lot of trouble, more than people realize,” he said.
Despite the disruption, he said crews responded quickly and the system stabilized without major complications.
