Squirrel knocks out power to thousands in San Francisco bay area

[Baclava]

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A squirrel knocked out power for some 45,000 energy customers in the San Francisco Bay area on Monday, according to officials and the local Contra Costa Times newspaper.

Pacific Gas and Electric Company said on its Twitter account that service had been restored for virtually all those affected by the outage about 10:15 p.m. local time, but it did not provide a cause for the disruption.

PG&E spokesman J.D. Guidi told the Contra Costa Times that power was down in cities east of San Francisco, including Berkeley and Oakland, on Monday night after a squirrel "impacted equipment" at the El Cerrito substation. He gave no details

The downtown Berkeley station of the Bay Area Rapid Transit system was closed for several hours on Monday due to the outage, the agency said on its Twitter account.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/06/09/us-usa-california-outages-idUSKBN0OP0TD20150609

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[randome]

1. Well, to be fair, it was a pretty big squirrel!

And hey! Didn't I copyright that image of my pet Figaro? (Perfect for this thread, though.)
[hr][font color="blue"][center]You should never stop having childhood dreams.[/center][/font][hr]

[elleng]

2. 'Impacted equipment!'

Damn, I hate the way that word is used! 'Chewed through/Broke/affected/any damn thing else!'

[Baclava]

3. sounds ballistic

[bluesbassman]

4. PG&E's theory sounds a little squirrelly to me.

[Herman4747]

5. Squirrel may strongly object to Global Warming. (n/t)

[KamaAina]

6. Well, now, that's just nuts.

[Sanity Claws]

16. That was my response!

You know, great minds think alike.

[hifiguy]

7. I've seen squirrels responsible for knocking out a neighborhood's power

by getting into a local transformer - and resulting in a shorted out transformer and a flash-fried squirrel - but that sounds a little goofy.

[RebelOne]

10. That happened a few years ago in my neighborhood.

A squirrel chewed the wires and knocked out the power and cable connections for a couple of hours.

[0rganism]

14. used to happen at a tech company i worked at back in 1999

#1 drain on the backup power supply batteries: squirrels jumping into a transformer at a nearby substation

i don't know why it was such an appealing form of squirrel suicide, but ... there you go.

[MineralMan]

8. Ah...It gave its life so you might not see.

[madinmaryland]

9. Barroid bonds' squirrel must be on steroids!!

[pintobean]

12. This guy retired and headed out to the coast.

Stirring shit is in his blood.

[Prism]

11. Probably my fault

I feed the squirrels of El Cerrito. But it is an offering I make cheerfully to protect my home from their technological terrorism.

While my phone blew up with stories of friends without power (one guy at San Andreas had to leave the theater), I sat cheerfully in my home watching Netflix.

Everywhere in a several mile radius except my little three block zone was completely black.

They like cashews, btw.

[awoke_in_2003]

13. Moose also being sought for questioning. nt

[liberaltrucker]

15. Sounds familiar