According to the local newspaper, Sun Sentinel, a rogue iguana climbed onto a power grid’s transformer which led to a mass power outage that impacted roughly 1,400 customers in Palm Beach.
By the end of the mishap, the iguana lost its life.
“Nothing is going to survive that situation,” Ben Kerr, a spokesperson for the city of Lake Worth Beach, told the paper. “The pictures are horrible every time this happens.”
Iguanas are not native to the area and have always caused problems of this kind. Earlier this year, the city of Miami announced a new plan that proposed paying hunters for bringing in iguanas — dead or alive.
The iguanas are also amazing climbers, and if they were to ever climb up a utility pole, they’re large enough to cover two power lines at once which can lead to a huge short.
They’re also so heavy that when they make it to a transformer, it results in a short. As Kerr has put it to the Sentinel, can’t just “blast them off.”
“If it was a bird or small animal, the system would carry on serving power,” he said, explaining that the iguanas’ carcasses have to be manually removed by energy professionals. “You wouldn’t even know what happened.”
As a defense mechanism, several areas have incorporated “hardening” measures to protect city power lines and other critical infrastructure from the curious climbers, according to the Sun Sentinel.
However, these incidents don’t provide a hundred percent guarantee.
So far, iguanas have caused three power outages this year, which, per the Sentinel, is a 60 percent decrease from 2021.
