06/11/2026
A single snake just knocked out power for ~4,500 people.
On June 7, a snake slid into a Statesville Public Power substation in Iredell County, NC, looking for warmth, made contact with energized equipment, and took the grid down for roughly 4,500 customers. Crews needed about 90 minutes to restore service.
It sounds almost comical. It stops being funny the moment you price out 90 minutes of downtime at a hospital, a water treatment plant, a data center, or a manufacturing line.
Here's the uncomfortable part: animal intrusion is one of the most common and most preventable causes of unplanned substation outages in the country. Snakes, raccoons, birds, and rodents trigger thousands of them every year. They are drawn to the warmth and shelter of the equipment, and once they bridge an energized gap, the result is the same every time. Lights out.
The fix is not exotic. It is engineered animal mitigation fencing and barrier systems.
Langston Construction Company has built and protected critical infrastructure since 1969. Our animal mitigation fencing keeps wildlife out of the places that cannot afford to go dark:
• Electric substations and switchyards
• Water and wastewater treatment facilities
• Battery energy storage and renewable sites
• Data centers and other mission-critical facilities
Reliability is not just transformers and relays. It is what you keep on the other side of the fence.
If your facility does not have a wildlife intrusion plan, that is a one-snake problem waiting to happen. Let's talk before the next outage, not after.
