Two black bear cubs were fatally electrocuted after climbing a utility pole in downtown Juneau Monday night, temporarily knocking out power in part of the Flats neighborhood.
Juneau residents have seen the family – three cubs and a mother bear – wandering downtown in recent weeks.
Tara Thornton witnessed the incident on West 12th Street around 11:00 p.m.
She said she heard people hollering and saw a car turn around in her driveway, so she went outside and saw that a bear had made a mess of the trash. As she and her husband cleaned up, they heard a zap.
“Moments later, we see a bear cub fall from the top of the telephone pole,” she said.
The cub died. Thornton said people gathered around to see what was happening, which didn’t help the situation. She and her neighbors tried to direct traffic away from the scene so another cub would feel safe to climb down.
Meanwhile, she said the sow was pacing nearby and trying to carry both her dead cub and its wailing sibling away from the crowd.
Roy Churchwell, Alaska Department of Fish & Game’s regional management coordinator, and his colleague arrived at the scene after the first cub died. They managed the onlookers.
“We’d ask them to go into their houses and kind of quiet things down, and that was happening,” he said.
In situations like this, he said the best way to protect bears is to give them space.
But then, the cub that was still up on the utility pole hit the transformer. The electric shock killed it instantly and knocked out power in part of the Flats neighborhood.
Churchwell said it sounded like a gun went off.
Thornton said this could have been prevented. Now, she wants to see metal sleeves or other barriers go up on the utility poles in town to keep bears from climbing to their deaths.
Churchwell said a third cub survived the ordeal and appeared uninjured with its mother when he was called to respond to the sow chasing someone in the Evergreen Cemetery Tuesday morning.
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