goTriad.com

GREENSBORO — Jeanette Blaylock has a house full of new appliances and she’s not one bit happy about it.

The 78-year-old Greensboro resident didn’t want a new television or a new refrigerator. Her coffee machine and clocks? They were working just fine, thank you.

The shiny new products didn’t come from an enjoyable day out shopping, but rather as a necessity thanks to a pesky squirrel. The squirrel’s taste for aluminum sent 220 volts of electricity straight into Blaylock’s home on Aug. 16 — frying just about everything plugged in.

The power surge resulted from a freak occurrence, power officials say. But the near-disaster has Blaylock warning others in the hope that her ordeal could save a life.

Blaylock’s problem started when she came home from an out-of-town trip one Saturday afternoon. She tried to make a pot of coffee, but the power was out. A flip of the breaker didn’t remedy the problem.

The phone was working, so she called Duke Energy to ask someone to take a look.

“I was sitting on the phone waiting and I heard what I thought was something hitting the door. ... I hung up the phone and smoke was coming out of my TV,” Blaylock said. “Black, gray smoke ... I dashed over and unplugged everything.”

A worker from Pike Electric later told Blaylock that a squirrel had gnawed into the aluminum neutral wire in her power line. The damage caused two 110-volt wires to touch and send 220 volts directly into her home.

The surge bypassed her circuit-breaker, which continued to work fine, but fried everything operating on less than 220 volts of power. The surge also blew out all of the floodlights mounted on Blaylock’s home and sent a motion detector box flying across her yard.

Duke Energy says it can’t be held liable for power outages caused by wild animals. After paying a $500 deductible, Blaylock’s homeowner’s insurance replaced the lost appliances, but she expects the ordeal to cause her rates to increase.

“It’s been one hassle after another. If I hadn’t had smoke detectors and this happened in the middle of the night ... I might not be here today,” Blaylock said.

“If this would have happened while I was traveling,’’ she said, “I could have came home to an empty lot and two dead cats.”

Duke Energy spokesman Andy Thompson declined to address Blaylock’s situation specifically, but he said outages caused by animals gnawing into neutral lines happen about 125 times each year across the Carolinas. He said the company has no record of the problem causing a fire.

“We have 2.4 million customers, and it’s a relatively small customer base in terms of outages,” Thompson said, noting that the same problem can be caused by a tree limb falling on a line or by the weather.

Thompson said the company uses aluminum neutrals as a standard, but is looking at other materials less likely to attract squirrels.

John Wooding, a biologist with the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission, said squirrels will chew on just about anything to keep their incisors short.

“My guess is that they were just chewing and liked the aluminum because it was something they could sink their teeth into,” Wooding said.

Blaylock’s brother, Steve Brown, said he worries that smoke detectors could be rendered useless by a power surge and people could lose their lives — a scenario that a local fire official said he couldn’t rule out.

“It’s a toss-up, if it would short everything out,” said David Douglas, an assistant fire chief and fire marshal with the Greensboro Fire Department, noting he has never seen a blaze caused by a gnawing squirrel.

“All detectors wired into a home have a battery backup. However, the UL (Underwriters Laboratory) does not test to see if it would work after a power surge.”

Blaylock and Brown have notified the N.C. Attorney General’s Office of the problem in the hope it will lead to new wiring requirements. They also are warning people to have battery-operated smoke detectors, just in case.

“This is endangering people’s lives,” Brown said. “You hear about electrical fires all the time, and there’s no telling if a squirrel bit through a line.”

Contact Ryan Seals at 373-7077 or ryan.seals@news-record.com