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Power Outages Cause Traffic Lights to Go Dark

by ARLnow.com | March 8, 2011 at 8:29 am | 908 views | 29 Comments

Update at 9:35 a.m. — Power has been restored, Dominion spokeswoman Le-Ha Anderson says. The outage was caused by a single, unlucky squirrel.

According to Anderson: “We had a squirrel get onto a piece of equipment which caused a power outage near Pershing Drive and Route 50 in Arlington. At 7:42 AM, 1,765 customers lost power as a result of the squirrel making contact with our equipment and becoming the path of least resistance for electricity to travel to ground.”

Earlier: Traffic lights are out at a number of busy Arlington intersections due to a widespread power outage.

Dominion reports that more than 1,800 customers are without power this morning. Power is expected to be restored between 9:00 and 11:00 a.m.

Traffic lights are reported to be dark at the following intersections:

Route 50 and Pershing Drive
Route 50 and Henderson Road
George Mason Drive and Pershing Drive
George Mason Drive and Henderson Road
Four Mile Run Drive and Columbia Pike

Police are directing traffic at most, if not all, the above intersections.

Nance

Does Barrett elementary have power?
Ballston resident

I live in the Ballston Place townhouses, and our power went out around 7:30 this morning, and wasn’t back on when we left for work. Dominion told us it would be 3-4 hours before they could “figure it out”.
Take it down a notch

As of 8:45 or so, traffic lights were working at Pershing and George Mason. No lights at Henderson, and no police either.
KArlington

mmmmmmmm….fried squirrel!
Overgrown Bush

Amazing how it is always a squirrel that causes the problems. They either are really pesky, or a convenient excuse. I wonder why a bird is never to blame?
- PikeHoo
  
  Birds concentrate their efforts on planes.
- borf
  
  http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=news/bizarre&id=8000889
  
  ANCHORAGE — A raven to blame for an hour-long power outage Sunday afternoon in much of downtown Anchorage won’t ever darken Alaska’s largest city again.
  
  Municipal Light and Power workers found its carcass at a switchyard where its wings shorted out electrical lines.
  - Overgrown Bush
    
    You had to go to Alaska to find that! They probably don’t have squirrels there….too cold!
    - borf
      
      Yeah, but it was reported on the same day. More dying animals. The Apocalypse is proceeding on schedule.
- CW
  
  Have you ever seen a squirrel after it’s been removed from a transformer? I have. It’s pretty ridiculous.
squirrel

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!
G. Clifford Prout

Someone is actually named Le-Ha?
- CW
  
  If that were my name, I’d pronounce it LEEEEEEE-HAAAAAAHHHH!!!!
  - outoftowner
    
    Sadly, I think that is actually pernounced ‘Le Dash Uh’
- charlie
  
  i hope their last name is Wei.
- MIchael H.
  
  She’s of Vietnamese descent. You have a problem with that? Sorry if everyone isn’t Anglo-Saxon.
  - G. Clifford Prout
    
    Her new name is now Cathy.
shirley

i bet all those intersections are operating more efficiently without lights.
i find that traffic lights cause people to pay less attention and speed.
thee is a movement in Europe to remove all traffic lights from towns. makes people pay more attention.
i think it is a very good idea and we should do that here as well.
no more speeding to catch that green. people paying attention at ALL intersections.
and best yet people get frustrated and just give up on driving.

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2008/0912/p07s03-woeu.html
- Take it down a notch
  
  Actually, no, there were all kinds of traffic backups. It was a mess.
- http://www.downwardfacingdem.com Colleen
  
  HAHAHA. That’s a good one. Tried to turn left onto 50 from Henderson. Had to wait forever until some “nice” aka “law-abiding” drivers remembered that a non-working street light is treated a 4-way-stop. Too bad I didn’t have that CS Monitor article to read while I waited forever to get get my commute started.
- shirley
  
  well one of the problems is that people don’t need to know what to do. the light always tells them.
  what if we retrain the rats to think and not rely on the lights to tell them what to do?
Lacy Forest

How come PEPCO never thinks to blame squirrels? They should have realized the tree explanation was going to eventually get old. They should have alternated explanations.
SaveDaveMcKenna

Has no one figured out how to squirrel proof the equipment by now?
SquirrelFritters

Oh, they “can” squirrel-proof them, but this way is more sporting and tastier.
- jan
  
  I wouldn’t count on it
CrystalMikey

Squirrel!
CW

Can I just say as a side onte that I LOVE the title of this article?
- CW
  
  note*
BoredHouseWife

poor squirrel

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