Power Protection FEATURED ARTICLE

Even when your workday is done and you’re settled in for the night, it pays to be vigilant and to plan ahead for any eventuality.

Residents of the Louisiana town of Opelousas discovered that fact the hard way this week when power went out unexpectedly at around 9 p.m. Wednesday evening.

According to the Daily World newspaper, the outage was caused by a “masked bandit.”

Robbyn Cooper with Cleco, which supplies power to the city, told the paper a raccoon had gotten into the utility’s Guidry Street Substation on the northwest side of the city. The animal is believed to have shorted out a major power line, blowing two transformers. The result: about 5,700 households — most of the city — lost power.

“The whole substation went down,” Cooper told the World, adding that the failure caused switches and breakers to fail across a wide area.

It’s worth keeping in mind that because of the randomness of such incidents, power protection systems are a must for keeping a steady power supply during power outages, spikes, surges and any other types of interruptions in the power supply. Power protection systems provide much needed protection against health hazards and data loss, and are necessary for maintaining communications systems. The local police chief discovered that the hard way.

“It was extremely dark,” Opelousas Police Chief Perry Gallow, who spent much of the night coordinating the city’s response to the blackout, told the World. Gallow said his department’s main concern was with traffic, as the power failure knocked out all the city’s traffic lights. “Motorists are supposed to treat all traffic lights as four-way stops when they are not working, but some motorists haven’t gotten that message,” Gallow said.

It might’ve helped to have a backup system in place. Minuteman UPS/Para Systems (News - Alert), a provider of unique and robust power protection solutions, offers an array of products geared toward businesses, from outlet surge protectors to UPS (uninterruptible power supplies). Using power protection equipment can save such businesses thousands in costly damages and lost revenue due to outages, as well as keep things running smoothly and efficiently in the event of an interruption or total outage.