Guam – After initially reporting that the islandwide blackout on November 3 was due to systemic failures, the Guam Power Authority is now saying that not one, but two brown tree snakes are to blame for the mass power outage. GPA spokesman Art Perez says the full internal report shows that the snakes were crawling along the main power lines along Ypao Road in Tamuning that night, causing the initial fault.
Perez adds that it is not uncommon for these creatures to end up in areas that result in power outages. Perez, however, maintains it was the protective relay failure that occurred at the Tamuning substation that caused the line fault to persist affecting the entire islandwide power outage. Perez says GPA is working to install backup protective relay systems to another level of protection to prevent it from happening again.
He says the last time a snake played a role in an islandwide outage was in the mid-1990s.