Bird’s misguided flight affected 14,000 people
Evidence says it was some kind of bird that shorted out the entire Whitehorse-Aishihik-Faro electrical grid and its 14,000-plus customers late Thursday afternoon.
Evidence says it was some kind of bird that shorted out the entire Whitehorse-Aishihik-Faro electrical grid and its 14,000-plus customers late Thursday afternoon.
But what kind of bird?
Craig Steinbach, manager of customer service for Yukon Electrical Co. Ltd., said today residents in the area of the power lines across from the Kopper King called the fire department and Yukon Electrical after witnessing a fireball along the line.
Firefighters didn’t see anything of a blaze when they arrived. And when the lineman from Yukon Electrical showed up, the only thing he could see was an area near a pole where all the frost on the wires was missing, and a few feathers on the ground.
Steinbach said without finding the carcass of the bird, nobody can be certain what caused the outage.
But the evidence does suggest a bird, he said.
The power on the grid went out at 3:58 p.m., and all customers were fully restored by less than an hour later, at 4:49.
The outage forced businesses to shut down. It also sent Whitehorse bylaw officers to the busier intersections to help unsnarl traffic that was backed up several blocks in the falling darkness.
Second Avenue traffic was backed up from Main Street north to Ogilvie Street. It took almost half an hour to reset the flashing traffic lights at Main and Second after power was restored.
Customers at Marsh Lake down to Teslin were the first to come back on at 4:17, and Porter Creek was the last.
Steinbach explained when the system is shorted out, Yukon Energy has to let its hydro units wind down before spinning them back up.
As generation climbs and power becomes available, Yukon Electrical turns on different communities and sections of Whitehorse, according to how much power is available and how much is required to recharge each area, he said.
Steinbach said he suspects the bird flew through the lines in the fading daylight. Its wings came into contact with two wires at the same time, he believes, causing an initial arc that quickly turned into the bright fireball witnessed by residents.
The initial arc, he explained, likely caused the brief power bump a split second before the entire system went down.
It’s not uncommon to find no carcass but feathers or blood at the source of a power outage, Steinbach said.
He said the bird could still be alive, and it could have flown off a considerable distance, but it was likely temporarily blinded by the bright flash of the fireball.
The feathers located at the base of the pole are white with grey tips, he said.
Bruce Bennett, Environment Yukon’s wildlife viewing biologist, said this morning he couldn’t determine what type of bird it was without seeing the feathers.
But he doesn’t think it was an owl, as there are no snowy owls in this area and the short-eared owl has already migrated through.
And none of the three common owls that are around – the great horned own and Boreal owl and northern hawk owl – have white feathers.
Perhaps a magpie, suggested a hesitant Bennett.
He said it sounds like a gull, but there are no gulls here at this time of year, although one was found dead near Johnson’s Crossing in January 2007.
francias pillman
Dec 11, 2009 at 7:29 pm
The evidence is yukon electric lying as usual. Your company is an utter embarrassment. And you should be forced to give yukoners back some money based on your incompetence in keeping the power on.