Nearly 2,000 people in Salem were without power Tuesday morning due to a squirrel.
According to Portland General Electric, the outage hit at 10:42 a.m. causing 1,953 households and businesses. to lose power. While PGE noted the outage was caused by a squirrel, spokeswoman Marsha Sanchez could not confirm exactly how.
“Wildlife can contribute to outages in many different ways, unfortunately it’s not possible to pinpoint the specific cause,” she told Salem Reporter.
In 2019, a Salem squirrel took out power in the Salem Heights area for about 130 households after causing several lines to fall.
Power was out for about an hour, with PGE restoring it for all customers by 12:07 p.m.
Contact reporter Jordyn Brown at [email protected].
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Jordyn Brown is an Oregon journalist who formerly worked for the Eugene Register-Guard.
