Tiny Rodent Triggers Borough Power Outage

By Andrew Gorosko

A local mouse decided to take a vertical walk on the night of Friday, November 17, thus plunging part of the town center into darkness for 22 minutes after the tiny mammal climbed a utility pole and inadvertently tripped a circuit breaker atop it.

The opened circuit breaker located behind Andrea’s Bake Shop at 5 Queen Street emitted a bright flash and sounded a thundering boom, startling borough residents, as it threw the area into darkness at about 7:45 pm, leaving 198 Connecticut Light & Power Company (CL&P) customers without electricity.

“We found a fried mouse…It was still smoking,” said Newtown Hook & Ladder Fire Chief Ray Corbo of the mouse carcass that lay at the base of the utility pole, which carries more than 14,000 volts of electricity.

“Usually, it’s a squirrel that does it,” he said of that larger rodent’s tendency to cause such electrical outages.

Earlier in the day, at about noon, a squirrel did create an electrical outage for two CL&P customers on Poverty Hollow Road, said CL&P spokesman Mitch Gross.

But even a tiny mouse is capable of wrecking electrical havoc when it comes into contact with a circuit breaker, he noted.

“It certainly gets your attention when it happens,” he said. Circuit breakers are safety devices installed in the electric grid to limit damage to the power system when electrical loads become excessive.

The borough power outage triggered consequent electrical problems in the area, such as failed computer systems and false burglary/fire alarms.

After the power failed, the town’s emergency communications center at Town Hall South automatically switched over to power provided by an emergency generator.

Also, traffic signals failed in the area.

Firefighters cordoned off the area where the mouse had caused the problem as a CL&P crew went about rearming the circuit breaker. Ten firefighters responded to the call.