Wildlife Continues To Disrupt City’s Electricity

By Gordon HopkinsFairbury suffered yet another power outage the morning of Tuesday, September 28. The first occurred at approximately 3:00 a.m., the second at 8:05 a.m. Neither lasted very long. According to Fairbury City Administrator Robert Messbarger, “The outage at 3:00 was due to an owl landing on a transformer. A large number of customers experienced a brief outage of 1-2 seconds. There were a few customers who experienced an extended outage. The outage at 8:05 was due to a squirrel causing a breaker to trip. A large number of customers experienced this brief outage of 1-2 seconds.”The disruptions impacted some, but not all, of the city. Although the power loss lasted only moments, it was still enough to interrupt work for some, as data was lost when computers shut down.Fairbury has experienced multiple power outages in the past year, mostly attributed to wildlife.A widespread, but not city-wide, power outage Wednesday morning, May 19, blacked out much of Fairbury beginning approximately 8:45 a.m. Then City Administrator Mary Renn told FJN, “A part in the sub-station by the power plant was faulty (aged and weathered) and needed to be replaced. There were a few switches that impacted quite a few areas, however it was not a city-wide event and the maximum duration of the outage was approximately one hour.”A second, much briefer outage happened the next day at 10:30 a.m. and lasted less than five minutes. Renn said, “I spoke with our superintendent and although a part went faulty yesterday (Wednesday), a squirrel was found in the substation this morning, so yesterday’s issue was triggered by a squirrel and lead into replacing a part. This morning, another squirrel off of 7th caused the outage. The problem has been resolved.”Fairbury suffered a city-wide power outage on Friday, April 8, from approximately 11:30 a.m. until 12:30 p.m. In 2020, an outage occurred at approximately 2:15 p.m. on Sunday, September 27. The very next day, Monday, September 28, reports of an outage began coming in at about 11:15 a.m. Each of these prior incidents were also reported to be caused by squirrels coming into contact with a sub-station or other sensitive equipment.When asked what could be done about the ongoing problem, Messbarger told FJN, “The city utilizes squirrel and other animal guards to minimize the risk of power outages caused by animals. We are also in the process of long-term upgrades that are anticipated to lower these occurrences.”City Councilperson Bradley Kuzelka told FJN, “I have asked the city administrator (Robert Messbarger) about some hardware that could protect our grid. He is currently working on it. That’s all I’ve got for now.”

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