North Carolina’s electric co-ops deal with their share of animal-caused outages, including from squirrels, birds, snakes, raccoons, nesting insects – even cows (who like to scratch their backs on guy wires).
Randolph EMC added a new one to its list on December 12.
“At 9:55 that morning, a large outage occurred, affecting 377 members in the Eastwood/ Murdocksville area of Moore County. Our crews responded to the outage to find a tree on the three-phase line,” Randolph EMC CEO Dale Lambert told members in the co-op’s newsletter. “This, in and of itself, is not unusual. But the reason the tree fell was unusual. One of the expert tree fellers of the animal kingdom – a beaver – turned out to be the culprit.”
The perpetrator left irrefutable evidence at the scene (pictured below). Randolph EMC crews responded quickly, however, and power was restored in 37 minutes.
