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STATESVILLE About 5,000 electric customers lost power for up to 1 1/2 hours late Sunday after a snake crawled into live electrical equipment and shorted the system, city officials said this morning.
The widespread outage at about 10 p.m. affected downtown, Hartness and Museum roads, west Statesville and industrial areas along Northside Drive.
The delivery station where the black snake contacted the equipment is surrounded by woods and has had problems with snakes invading the equipment each summer, city spokeswoman Nancy Davis said. A little more than a year ago, a black snake crawled into equipment at the same delivery station and disrupted power to about 3,000 customers for several hours, Davis said.
Black snakes usually travel in pairs, so it wouldn't be unusual for the mate to be hanging around the delivery station, said Kent Houpe, assistant electric utility director.
