About 7,000 people were without power in Toronto for more than 2 hours Thursday night
A Hydro One spokesperson says the utility is looking at ways to make sure the city’s unofficial mascot stays out of transmission stations after a raccoon knocked out power to thousands of people in downtown Toronto.
Officials say about 7,000 customers in the city’s downtown were without power for more than two hours Thursday night after a lone raccoon made contact with a transformer at a transmission station in the Church-Wellesley area.
Hydro One spokesperson Tiziana Baccega Rosa says crews were able to confirm that the outage was caused by the raccoon “because the animal was unfortunately there on site and had perished when they arrived.”
She said, “When that happens, the system operates as it’s designed to in order to protect it from further damage.”
She says animals are often attracted to the warmth emanating from power stations, adding animals cause outages from “time to time.”
Baccega Rosa says the utility takes the situation “very seriously” and will look at “whatever measures” it can put in place to prevent similar outages from happening again, adding crews are on site with an animal abatement specialist to learn how the raccoon got into the transmission station.
She pointed to the utility’s other animal protection efforts, such as when crews build elevated platforms to help dissuade osprey from nesting on top of electricity poles, where the nests could be at risk of tumbling onto the lines below.
Preventing animal-related outages at power stations can look like building an enclosure around certain equipment, she said.
“When we realize, ‘OK, animals have taken to the station,’ in some places its known based on environmental information and others it’s sort of like, this is a new spot or did they break through something,” she said.
“So, I think there’s more to learn about on our end.”
Torontonians find humour in incident
Torontonian Monika Paul said she was without power for a few hours Thursday night, making it a challenge feeding and taking care of her two kids.
“There was no electricity, there was no water. There was nothing,” she said.
Despite the difficulty, she said the whole incident made her laugh.
“It was all caused by the raccoon. It was so funny,” she said.
Trevor McGrath, who helps organize local dodgeball games, said people had to leave mid-game when the power shut off at at the school they were playing at.
While it created chaos in the moment — especially when it came to commuting and getting out of the way of emergency vehicles rushing to rescue people stuck in elevators — it was easy to get back to normal after a few hours, he said.
“Just a funny Toronto thing that happened,” he said.
Source: cbc