Bird Knocks Out Power To Thousands In New Orleans

Power outages tend to be caused by weather, from heavy storms to extreme heat, but sometimes it is caused by something more unusual. Thousands of residents around New Orleans were without power Wednesday (March 9) morning thanks to an unlikely source: a bird.

According to WWLTV, nearly 10,000 people in the Central Business District lost power around 9:05 a.m., with New Orleans City Council President Helena Moreno saying the outage may have originated at the Derbigny Substation. Impacted areas of the city included Caesar's Superdome, North Claiborne Avenue and Earhart Boulevard.

Entergy New Orleans said it was working to restore power to more than 9,800 affected customers, adding in a statement to the news outlet that the outage may have been caused by a bird damaging electrical equipment.

"Our preliminary investigation indicates that a bird may have been the cause of the outage," the company said in a statement. "We hope to have estimated times of restoration shortly."

By lunchtime, Entergy had been able to restore power to a majority of the affected customers; however, more than 1,700 were still without power as of 11:30 a.m. To see if others are experiencing outages in your area, check out the company's outage map here.