'Bird Strike' Blamed For Loud Boom In Vernon Center

VERNON, CT — A "bird strike" was blamed for a loud boom in the center of Vernon Thursday morning.

The bang was quite audible a little after about 10 a.m. and power suddenly went out for a dozen homes on the extreme western end of Crestridge Drive and on Robin Road.

An Eversource truck arrived at the scene quickly, and a crew member said it appeared that birds landing and congregating on a wire factored into the explosion. The crew member said it happens more often than one would think.

An Eversource truck was dispatched at 10:19 a.m. and by 10:59, power had been restored. An Eversource message to residents, officials cited "animal" activity as the cause.

Eversource knows the neighborhood all too well. It was plagued by multiple-day and even weeklong outages for years from Hurricane Irene and the "Snowtober" storm in 2011 through Tropical Storm Isaias in 2020.

Aging and flawed infrastructure was fixed after Isaias and the area had had few problems since. The neighborhood sits halfway between state routes 30 and 83.