Dive Brief:
- A squirrel damaged Pacific Gas & Electric's El Cerrito substation on Monday night, knocking out power to 45,000 residents in the East Bay area.
- Residents in Berkeley, Albany, Richmond and El Cerrito were impacted by the outage, which took place from 8 p.m. to a little after 10 p.m.
- PG&E took to its twitter feed to share details about the incident, noting that the squirrel did not survive.
Dive Insight:
PG&E customers in the East Bay lost power for a couple of hours after a mischievous squirrel entered the El Cerrito substation, damaging equipment and leaving more than 40,000 in the dark. On the same day, another 7,500 residents in the South Bay lost power due to hot weather, the local CBS affiliate reported.
The utility thanked customers for their patience, and lamented the demise of the rodent.
Thank you for your patience as we worked to restore yesterday's #EastBay power outage. Our condolences to the squirrel.
— PG&E (@PGE4Me) June 9, 2015
Animals are known for causing headaches for utilities. In May, millions of "tent caterpillars" in east Texas covered power equipment and caused an outage in Sam Houston Electric Cooperative's territory. Officials said reliability is not the only threat from the 1.5-inch larvae; they can also wreak havoc on maintenance and right-of-way upkeep programs
