By Pepper Fisher

PORT ANGELES – About 5,500 utility customers in Port Angeles lost power Wednesday morning at around 8:00, primarily on the west side and the south end of town, but utility crews were able to get everyone back on within an hour or so.

The real story is what caused the outage, as Interim Public works Director Mike Healy explains.

“I can tell you that a seagull hit a transmission line from BPA, which tripped three of the substations, and as soon as BPA was able to get the transmission line back in place, we got our stuff back up. Sorry for the inconvenience to our customers but, yes, it’s a simple bird issue.”

In pointing out the obvious, that there are a lot of seagulls in Port Angeles, we asked Healy if a bird taking out power for thousands of customers exposed some kind of vulnerability in the BPA’s system.

“You know, there are a lot of seagulls, and it doesn’t happen a lot, but on occasion. This is just how transmission lines work, and the right elements come together with a bird and it hits the right spot and bingo. It’s unfortunate, but that’s one of the vulnerabilities with above-ground transmission lines.”

No word on the condition of the seagull.