Palm Beach County

Iguana Causes ‘Large-Scale' Power Outage in South Florida City

The city of Lake Worth Beach tweeted Wednesday morning the animal caused the outage at a substation, knocking power out to customers in the southeast area of the city

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Parts of a city in Palm Beach County lost power for several hours Wednesday due to a large-scale outage caused by an iguana.

NBC affiliate WPTV-TV reports the city of Lake Worth Beach tweeted Wednesday morning the animal caused the outage at a substation, knocking power out to customers in the southeast area of the city.

The outage impacted nearly 1,500 customers, according to city spokesperson Ben Kerr. He added the city has been working to remedy wildlife issues after three separate incidents involving iguanas.

"It's down 50% from last year," Kerr said. "And that's to do with us putting in a lot of safety measures to try and stop it. The problem with the iguana is because they're so big, they basically drive over lines."

Jason Bailey, Lake Worth Beach's assistant director of system operations, said the power was restored within 35 minutes.

Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission officials said green iguanas are not native to the state and can also cause damage to residential and commercial landscape vegetation.

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