Feb. 23 (UPI) — A squirrel left thousands of Canadians without power after wandering into a local power plant.
Bluewater Power announced that the squirrel found its way into part of its Hydro One station and left 12,000 people in Sarnia, Ontario, without electricity.
“I would say they were all back on by noon,” Janice McMichael-Dennis, president and CEO of Bluewater Power told the Sarnia Observer.
McMichael-Dennis said outages caused by animals are not uncommon, but the scope of this particular outage was much larger than usual.
“You do, fairly often, have animal-related outages,” she said. “It is rare for an animal to take down half a station. Normally they take down a feeder and you lose 1,000 customers.”
McMichael-Dennis added that most power companies invest in “animal protection” to prevent such incidents, but they primarily focus on protecting the equipment.
“It doesn’t protect the animal, it protects the system from the animal,” she said.
Bluewater Power reported that while the power was returned, the squirrel did not survive the incident.
“This is confirmed…the squirrel is but a shell of his former self…literally…” the company said.
