Raccoon causes power outage downtown

So, you might have heard about this already, but the story is too good to pass up: There was a power outage in the north end of downtown early Thursday morning, and it was caused by a raccoon trying to raid a bird nest. It happened around 12:30 a.m. at CenterPoint Energy's Gable Street substation in the 500 block of McKee when the unfortunate raccoon got electrocuted, plunging more than 1,500 customers north of Congress Avenue into darkness, including UH-Downtown, the main post office and the city and county jails.

The jails were placed on lockdown and streets around the buildings were blocked off. At the post office, KTRK reports that some workers were trapped for a while because many of the doors inside the building are electric, and they couldn't figure out how to leave. Bars and clubs in the area had to be shut down when their lights went out, and over near the Wortham Center, two cars crashed into each other when they both blew through an intersection where the traffic lights weren't working — the way Houstonians traditionally handle situations like that.

Power was restored to the area around 3 a.m. Turns out the problem of animals going after birds' nests is a pretty big problem for power companies, which is why CenterPoint has installed several anti-critter measures including high-frequency emitters designed to keep animals away from substations and decoys of owls and snakes designed to scare them if they make it into the facilities. The company has reduced animal electrocutions by 75 percent in the past 12 years, but there's apparently very little that can be done to stop the problem completely: "We've seen positive results from the deterrents but, unfortunately, some animals still get in," CenterPoint spokeswoman Leticia Lowe said. "It's an industrywide problem across the country."