Officials: Bald eagle flies into power lines, causes outages for hundreds

HUDSON, Wis. (WEAU/Gray News) - Hundreds of people in a Wisconsin city were without power for several hours Sunday after an outage was caused by a bald eagle, according to officials.

The Hudson Police Department made a post on Facebook Sunday afternoon saying a power outage was caused by a bald eagle that flew into a power line.

Xcel Energy said the bird made contact with equipment at a power substation that served Hudson customers around 3:30 p.m.

WEAU reports the incident caused a brief outage that lasted for around a minute for about 2,700 customers. A second outage followed, affecting 860 customers for two and a half hours.

In a statement, Xcel Energy said an observer in the Hudson area believed the bird was a bald eagle.

The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources was called in to remove the dead eagle. Power was then restored to all customers.