Osprey Cuts Power To Bonner Residents

Another nest-building osprey briefly cut power to several thousand Bonner County residents Wednesday morning.

The bird touched a stick across several power lines at a Bonnerville Power substation near Dover. The stick shorted out the lines and caused an outage from Cocolalla to Eastport, Idaho, near the Canadian border.

Most residents were out of power for only 10 minutes, but the power surge knocked out radio equipment at the Bonner County Sheriff’s Department.

It was deja vu for Sheriff Chip Roos. His department lost about $30,000 worth of electronic equipment last week when an osprey flew into power lines at the same substation.

That osprey died, but the bird that caused the recent outage managed to fly away unscathed.

This time, Roos said the bird blew out portable radios which had replaced equipment damaged in the last outage.

“We are starting to have to take radios out of cars to use,” he said. “Those damn birds are blowing the snot out of everything.”

, DataTimes