Haywood County Schools Lose Internet for 1 Day After Squirrel Cuts Power to Half of Waynesville
Updated
Updated · The Mountaineer · May 20
Haywood County Schools Lose Internet for 1 Day After Squirrel Cuts Power to Half of Waynesville
1 articles · Updated · The Mountaineer · May 20
Summary
Haywood County Schools stayed offline all Tuesday after an early-morning outage in Waynesville knocked out the district’s internet hub, forcing testing to be pushed back a day.
A squirrel entered a substation, was electrocuted and triggered a surge that took the Waynesville substation offline, cutting power and internet to about half the town for more than an hour.
Duke Energy equipment next to the town-owned substation was also hit, so Duke crews had to repair and clear their side before Waynesville workers could restore service shortly after 9 a.m.
Waynesville brought power back by bypassing a damaged insulator, but some ports on the school system’s server remained inactive after the restart, leaving IT staff working with Dell Support on an uncommon fault.
School officials said they hoped to restore internet by Wednesday, while the outage highlighted how a brief local power failure can disrupt countywide operations during testing season.