Snake causes power outage, leaving nearly 7,000 residents in the dark: What happened in Virginia
ETimes July 08, 2026 02:39 AM
A snake slithered across a piece of equipment at a Virginia substation just after midnight on July 1, and within seconds, thousands of homes across the Shenandoah Valley went dark. The outage affected about 6,500 Dominion Energy customers, and it didn't take long for utility crews to figure out exactly what or rather, who was to blame.
According to reports, the snake slithered over a critical piece of equipment at a substation, triggering an automatic safety shutdown designed to protect the electrical system. So in a weird way, the outage was the system working exactly as it should. The shutdown exists to stop small problems from turning into big, expensive ones. It just wasn't built with snakes in mind.
Dominion Energy spokesperson Craig Carper didn't seem too shaken by the whole thing. He told local station WHSV that some of our wildlife friends don't know what they're getting into, and that these run-ins happen more often than people think. And he's not wrong. Crews across the state deal with animal-related outages on a semi-regular basis, even if most residents never hear about them unless the lights actually go out.
How long before the lights came back
The good news is that nobody was left in the dark for long. The outage lasted about two hours and 15 minutes before crews got everything back online. For a midnight outage, that's a pretty fast turnaround, especially once you consider someone had to physically locate the problem, deal with the equipment, and probably the snake too, before power could safely be restored.
If this sounds oddly familiar, that's because it kind of is. In 2024, a snake entered a high-voltage area at a substation in Newport News, briefly knocking out power to more than 11,000 customers before crews got it sorted. Same state, same basic scenario, different snake. Virginia's substations, it seems, have a bit of a reptile problem — or maybe just enough wildlife nearby that it was bound to happen eventually.
Why this keeps happening
Substations aren't exactly hostile to animals looking for a warm, quiet place to hide. Snakes, squirrels, birds — they slip through gaps, climb onto equipment, and sometimes end up exactly where thousands of volts are running. Most of the time nothing happens. But every so often, contact is made, and the safety systems designed to protect the grid kick in, cutting power to whole neighborhoods in the process.
