WEST NORRITON — A power outage on Friday at Norristown Area High School that prompted classes to let out early was apparently caused by a squirrel.
Yes, a squirrel.
Norristown Area School District Superintendent Christopher Dormer briefly addressed the incident during Monday’s school board meeting.
“It was unique,” Dormer said in a phone interview following the meeting. “I mean I’ve been to places where we’ve had power outages, but never when a single little guy knocking a building the size of our high school completely out.”
Dormer said he first learned of the issue around 9:45 a.m. on Friday in a text message from Assistant Superintendent Yolanda Williams, who had been at the West Norriton Township-based school meeting with other administrative officials.
“We rallied the administrative team to figure out how extensive — was it just the high school? Where was the issue at?” Dormer said. “And really what was the potential timeline to try to get power restored because we were in full swing. We had over 2,000 students in the building at that time.”
Dormer said he made the decision to enact protocol for an early dismissal late Friday morning, noting further urgency as the school’s food service personnel were not able to fully prepare lunches without a sufficient power source. At that point a timeline from PECO was unclear. School district officials then coordinated transportation and issued communications updates to parents and guardians.
But things were a bit more complicated as Jeffrey Cardwell, the school district’s chief operations officer, revealed a squirrel had fallen out of a tree and onto the electrical substation on campus. The squirrel was electrocuted, Dormer said. No other injuries were reported.
“I guess where he fell damaged a specialty fuse that was going to be more than a couple hours to locate and get installed,” Dormer said, adding that “not only did we commit to an early dismissal, but we had to cancel our afternoon and evening events just because we knew the duration of the power outage was going to go much later in the day than we had anticipated.”
The power outage extended to the school’s communication system, and the loudspeaker was not accessible to transmit updates to students and staff in the classrooms.
“We went old school,” Dormer said. “We literally had to go in teams of people going room to room to say, ‘here’s the plan. Here’s what we’re going to do. It’s going to be an early dismissal. Here’s how we’re going to dismiss.’ When you factor in those additional pieces, again, just my gratitude and respect for everybody in that building for how they supported, conducted themselves, went to a whole new level.”
“It really took us back, probably 30, 40 years back in communication, where you literally had to go person-to-person and you couldn’t email it or we didn’t have the [public address system] PA to do any mass communication,” he continued. “So again, just attribute it to the teamwork that went on that day to keep everybody safe, keep everybody calm and most importantly get everybody out of the building successfully and home with no issues.”
After receiving the required part, Dormer said power was restored on Saturday, and classes resumed as normal on Monday.
“It’s one of those interesting situations, but a little bit of levity, and all’s well that ended well at the end of the day because all of the human beings were just outstanding on Friday,” he said.
