Possum knocks out power and plunges Bunbury into darkness
About 12,000 homes and businesses were plunged into darkness by a power outage in Bunbury on Tuesday night — and a possum is likely to blame.
Parts of Dalyellup in the south through to Australind in the north — including College Grove, Glen Iris, Eaton, Davenport, South Bunbury and the CBD — went dark from 9.30pm.
Temperatures hovered around 23C, with power not restored until 11pm.
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By continuing you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy.A Western Power spokesperson said the blackout was caused by “animal interference” in the network.
“I believe it was a possum but I don’t have any specific details around which part of the network it impacted,” they said.
“It’s fairly common — they use power lines as routes to get from one tree to another and sometimes they just touch the wrong bit.”
Despite the outage, Western Power said it was prepared going into the hotter months.
“We’ve done a lot of bushfire preparedness and summer preparedness work on the network as part of our regular maintenance program and that’s all on track for this year,” the spokesperson said.
Originally published on South Western Times
