{"id":28933,"date":"2024-03-01T22:20:02","date_gmt":"2024-03-02T05:20:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/bird-knocks-out-power-to-thousands-of-durango-area-residents\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T00:44:56","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T06:44:56","slug":"bird-knocks-out-power-to-thousands-of-durango-area-residents","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/bird-knocks-out-power-to-thousands-of-durango-area-residents\/","title":{"rendered":"Bird knocks out power to thousands of Durango-area residents"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><figure class=\"wp-block-image naviga-inline-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/imengine.public.prod.dur.navigacloud.com\/?uuid=0433e91f-2eb9-4f52-92be-123efa67a013&amp;function=cover&amp;type=preview&amp;source=false&amp;width=2000\" width=\"1600\" height=\"1067\" alt=\"La Plata Electric Association said it would delay a rate increase to ease the burden on customers during the emergency response to the coronavirus, which has resulted in layoffs and slowed the economy.\" class=\"naviga-image\" loading=\"lazy\"><figcaption><span class=\"caption\">La Plata Electric Association said it would delay a rate increase to ease the burden on customers during the emergency response to the coronavirus, which has resulted in layoffs and slowed the economy.<\/span><span class=\"credit\">Courtesy of La Plata Electric Association<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p><p>A bird is being blamed for a power outage that impacted about 9,500 La Plata Electric Association customers Friday afternoon in Durango and the Animas Valley.<\/p>\n<p>The outage occurred at 2:07 p.m. when a bird \u201cbridged\u201d two live conductors and created a short circuit at the Trimble substation, which serves the Animas Valley and the west side of Durango, according to a statement from LPEA.<\/p>\n<p>The bird essentially acted as a conduit between two electrical components that are not supposed to touch, according to an LPEA spokeswoman.<\/p>\n<p>LPEA crews were able to restore power to three in-town substations within 16 minutes, but members in the Trimble area were without power for an hour \u2013 from 2:07 to 3:07 p.m., according to LPEA.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLPEA goes to great lengths to avoid wildlife-caused outages and places protective equipment on its transformers to reduce the risk of electrocuting wildlife,\u201d LPEA wrote in a statement to <em id=\"emphasis-6db317bb1f12722a1f0ad094fa8f1e29\">The Durango Herald<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p><em id=\"emphasis-a217b5cdc9b0e15bfbe45a77258fb999\"><a href=\"mailto:shane@durangoherald.com\">shane@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<p><figure class=\"wp-block-image naviga-inline-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/imengine.public.prod.dur.navigacloud.com\/?uuid=4934c2a6-568a-5f74-be42-0a5095e0438c&amp;function=cover&amp;type=preview&amp;source=false&amp;width=2000\" width=\"811\" height=\"684\" alt=\"A map showing areas without power Friday afternoon. (Courtesy of La Plata Electric Association website)\" class=\"naviga-image\" loading=\"lazy\"><figcaption><span class=\"caption\">A map showing areas without power Friday afternoon. (Courtesy of La Plata Electric Association website)<\/span><span class=\"credit\">cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>occurred shortly after 2 p.m.; Animas Valley customers were without electricity for one hour<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28934,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28,483],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-28933","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines","tag-la-plata-electric-association"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28933","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28933"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28933\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":80583,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28933\/revisions\/80583"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28933"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=28933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}