They weren’t on the bus, but they might be dining at the Dumpster.

Raccoons, which forage at night, have been blamed for two power outages in recent days, both triggered when animals entered an Entergy substation near Porters Chapel Academy. Neither left alive, but the electric company has followed up by trying to determine what may be attracting the raccoons and what can be done to keep them away from high-voltage transformers.

One possible habitat was an old school bus, abandoned on the property. Lynn Baker, headmaster of Porters Chapel, said an Entergy representative told her an inspection showed no signs of raccoons living on the bus, but footprints were underneath. She said the school would remove the bus if asked.

The more likely draw is the school’s waste container, which contains cafeteria leftovers along with other debris. “There may be some food waste issues here,” said Don Arnold, Entergy Mississippi customer service manager for the Vicksburg area. 

What to do about that wasn’t immediately decided.

In the meantime, Entergy installed two raccoon traps and sprayed animal-deterrent products around the area as preventive measures.

“It’s my commitment to complete the mitigation process by Friday afternoon,” says Thomas Harrell, East Vicksburg substation supervisor.

The outages were a week ago today and Monday night. The second was more severe, resulting in a loss of service to nearly 3,000 meters, hundreds of which remained without service on a night when the low was 27 degrees.

In both cases, raccoons had gotten through fences and wires and atop transformers where they contacted wires, causing shorts and shutdowns. Raccoons are not the only animals that climb on the utility poles.

More squirrels than raccoons have been found on transformers and, in the Mississippi Delta, north of Greenville, a 500-pound black bear even climbed a 40-foot transformer pole inside a hunting club.

“Not only are we going to aggressively address the animal control issues, we’re also going to some pre-emptive work to eliminate future outages,” Arnold said.

*

Contact Manivanh Chanprasith at mchanprasith@vicksburgpost.com.