Saturday, March 6, 2010

Two Feature Leads

Fact Set #1: A Squirrelly Situation

Who would have thought a squirrel could tie-up the mass transit commute in Manhattan?

That's exactly what happened Monday afternoon when a squirrel disrupted the Metro-North Commuter Railroad power lines causing 47,000 commuters from returning home.

According to Metro-North spokeswoman Donna Evans, a squirrel snuck its way into the train's major power lines which resulted in an electrical power surge. The surge weakened an overhead bracket which caused the bracket the dangle down and was yanked underneath a passing train. The stretched bracket eventually teared down the rest of the lines.

Service was restored by crews by Tuesday morning.

1 comment:

  1. Nice job on this lead! I like that you included the impact on commuters early in the story -- that's good.

    Your third paragraph still needs a little work:

    ... which caused the bracket to dangle down where it was yanked underneath a passing train. That tore (not teared) down the rest of the power lines, causing the power outage.

    13.5/15

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