鸟类撞击导致澳大利亚维多利亚州电线受损，2459户停电

澳大利亚维多利亚州发生的事件表明，动物与电力线路的一次接触也可能造成大范围停电。Bird strike brings down power line in Victoria – 2,459 customers affected

An unusual but by no means exotic event for electricity networks caused a major outage in the Australian state of Victoria on Thursday, 24 September 2026. According to network operator Powercor, a bird struck a power line north of Shepparton. The line was damaged and was left hanging down to the ground. A total of 2,459 customers temporarily lost electricity.

Powercor spokesperson Jordan Oliver told the Shepparton News that the incident occurred at about 3 pm local time. Repairing the damage and returning the line to service safely took several hours. Supply was restored at about 1 am on Friday, 25 September. Parts of the affected area were therefore without electricity for up to ten hours.

The incident shows that significant outages are not caused only by storms, major technical failures or problems at power stations. Animals can also interfere with electrical infrastructure. CitiPower and Powercor explicitly list animal contact among the possible causes of unplanned outages, including birds and other animals that come into contact with lines or electrical equipment.

In Shepparton, the damaged line was as important as the outage itself. A fallen or low-hanging power line must always be treated as live. People cannot reliably tell from appearance whether a line is de-energised. Damaged lines, poles and objects touching a line must therefore never be handled or moved by members of the public.

This event was very different from a planned interruption. It occurred without warning, and crews first had to identify the fault and make the damaged infrastructure safe. Events like this explain why basic blackout preparedness remains useful even where the grid is generally reliable. A household does not need to experience a nationwide blackout to spend several hours without electricity.

For affected households, the first minutes matter. Check whether only your home is dark or whether the surrounding area is also affected. Official information from the network operator is then more useful than speculation on social media. Powercor provides notifications for unplanned outages and a live outage map, with cause, crew status and estimated restoration time when available.

The Australian case also offers a practical reminder: the contact details for your own electricity distributor should be known before an outage and available offline. Anyone who has to search for phone numbers, outage maps or login details in the dark wastes time and depends on a working internet connection.

The outage north of Shepparton was regional and was resolved during the same night. It is nevertheless relevant to blackout preparedness because a single incident on an overhead line affected thousands of connections at once. The important issue is not only the scale of an outage but also its unpredictability. A small, maintained emergency kit and reliable information channels therefore help during local grid failures as well.

Updated: 25 September 2026. Sources: Shepparton News and official information from CitiPower/Powercor and Energy Safe Victoria.