Snake in substation knocks out power to thousands in Madison County

(Huntsville Utilities/Facebook)
HUNTSVILLE — Thousands of Huntsville Utilities customers were without power Tuesday night from an outage apparently caused by a snake.
Around 10 p.m., an outage impacted more than 33,000 customers in northwest Madison County and northwest Huntsville. The utility said it stretched from the Tennessee state line south to Alabama Highway 20 and from Wall Triana Highway east to U.S. 231/431 (North Memorial Parkway).
According to the utility, a snake crawled across the buss work in a substation that also feeds power to eight other substations.
“This caused the main feeder breaker to trip, meaning the stations it serves tripped also,” a utility spokesman said. “Our crews removed the snake, inspected for additional damage, then started resetting all the breakers.
The utility said its Electric Operations crews restored power to the remaining affected customers around 12:45 a.m. today.

The crews will be doing repair work today but it shouldn’t lead to any service interruptions.

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