OLDS — For the second time in two weeks, a bird caused a power outage in Olds – this time, causing outages in two locations, a FortisAlberta spokesman says.
The outage, which occurred at 9:03 a.m. on July 7, even affected the Splash Park, according to the town’s Facebook page. Power was restored to most customers by 9:38 a.m. The remaining ones were back on by 10 a.m.
About 3,000 customers were affected.
A power outage also occurred in Olds on June 29.
That outage occurred at 7:54 a.m. Power was restored at 8:41 a.m.
FortisAlberta manager of corporate communications Tanya Croft said that blackout was caused by a raven that got tangled in equipment.
She said 1,661 customers were impacted by that one.
Croft said the July 7 power outage was also caused by a bird.
“I have confirmed with the field that the cause of the outage was bird," she wrote in an email.
“In this case, given it was reported to have affected two locations within the town, a likely scenario is the bird would have tripped the power on one feeder and our system is set up to attempt to re-route power. However, in some cases (that) is not successful on first attempt.”
