Officials at Vassar Brothers Hospital in Poughkeepsie say
backup generators kicked on Tuesday afternoon when a common-variety snake got
into the switch box and disrupted the hospital's main power supply. Workers
found the dead snake inside the box.
Hospital officials say there were no patient care
disruptions caused by the outage, which lasted from 3 p.m. Tuesday to 1 a.m.
Wednesday. Some emergency room cases had to be diverted to other hospitals.
While squirrels and other small animals have been known
to get into electrical equipment and cause outages, a utility spokesman says
it's the first time he's heard of a snake doing it.
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