Big bird briefly downs power line Sunday

Night owls may have noticed their power go out late Sunday evening after a bird strike took down service for an hour.

A problem was reported to Wrangell Municipal Light and Power by police dispatch at around 11:20 p.m. Checking the substation behind the Public Works Department yard, electrical superintendent Clay Hammer explained one of the feeder relays was down. Feeder 4 provides power to utility users from one end of Peninsula Street down to the end of service along Zimovia Highway.

A potentially blown generator had been reported by a Peninsula resident, and a lineman was dispatched to the scene to investigate. He instead found a blown fuse cutout on a pole near Harbor House, finding the body of a blue heron nearby. The bird had apparently struck the line mid-flight, with the resulting disruption causing an overload to the line.

According to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, herons tend to winter along the shorelines in Southeast. While large in size at between three and four feet, even adult specimens tend to be pretty light, at around six pounds.

While it is unusual for them to trip a whole feeder, Hammer explained bird strikes to the line tend to happen a couple of times each year. In such collisions, the birds themselves are sometimes nowhere to be found, making an assessment of the failures’ causes tricky. With similar symptoms, another possibility is that the line’s insulator is faulty, a problem which can be difficult and time-consuming to fix.

“I was pretty thankful it wasn’t one of those,” Hammer commented. “The blue heron was the smoking gun we were looking for.” He considered for a moment, “Or smoking bird.”

The section was down for about an hour before service was returned to affected customers.