Whitehorse power outage caused by raven, says Yukon Energy
Bird flew into substation, causing 2-hour outage for parts of city, Minto Mine
A power outage that affected many parts of Whitehorse as well as the Minto mine Friday morning was caused by a raven, says Yukon Energy.
Spokesperson Janet Patterson says the bird got into a Whitehorse-area substation. The raven simultaneously touched two conductors, which caused a short-circuit. The bird was killed.
"When the power was lost at the McIntyre substation, it caused our largest Whitehorse hydro unit to shut itself down as a way of protecting itself," Yukon Energy said in a statement. "It is now back online."
The corporation said it ran its diesel generators briefly before switching back to hydroelectric power.
Power went out just before 8 a.m. local time. Yukon Energy says electricity was restored to all customers by 10:25 a.m.
ATCO Electric Yukon has also released more information about Thursday morning's outage that cut power to 1,000 customers in the Logan, McIntyre and Copper Ridge areas of Whitehorse.
Spokesperson Stephanie Cunha says crews investigating the outage said it was caused by a hawk coming in contact with a power line.