For about two hours today Crossville and a great portion of Cumberland County went dark…no electricity.  At the peak, more than 9,000 customers were without power.  This included most of downtown and several outlying areas. There were no storms in the area…no high winds.  Mostly a nice day on the Plateau.  CNF began digging into the problem right away.  Eventually, we learned that a Crossville Substation went down shutting off electricity to thousand of customers. One source close to the situation tells us that it was a critter.

We were told that a racoon, or many racoons had slipped into the substation and became wedged between two major power connectors which shorted out the connectors and shut down the substation.  We have been attempting to contact VEC to verify this was indeed the cause.  However, we have not heard back from VEC nor TVA.  It has been reported over the years that other animals, such as birds and squirrels, have shorted out high voltage lines and took downs substations.