Squirrel Causes Power Outage For 2,000 Silicon Valley Residents, Gets Fried In The Process

Squirrels are known the world over for meddling with national electricity grids as they often gnaw at vital wires which fry them in a second and cause power outages for thousands of people.

In one recent such incident, around 2,000 Silicon Valley residents were left without power completely after a curious squirrel meddled with PG&E’s electrical equipment. That curiosity left people living in Miller Avenue, Greenwood Court, Atherton Avenue, Candlewood Drive, Brookwell Drive, as well as the area around Finch Avenue and Stevens Creek Boulevard, without power.

Jon Mooallem, who wrote for the New York Times Sunday Review Opinion Pages, has a small, self-admitted personal obsession with squirrels causing power outages, a subject he clearly finds fascinating.

So curious was Mooallem about the phenomena that he set up a Google news alert for “squirrel power.”

As the summer progressed, and the local news reports of power outages caused by squirrels piled up in his inbox, his “interest in power outages caused by squirrels became more obsessive and profound.”

“I know: it’s hard to accept that a single squirrel can disrupt and frustrate thousands of people at a time, switching off our electrified lives for hours. But since Memorial Day, I’ve cataloged reports of 50 power outages caused by squirrels in 24 states. (And these, of course, are only those power outages severe enough to make the news.) Fifteen hundred customers lost power in Mason City, Iowa; 1,500 customers in Roanoke, Va.; 5,000 customers in Clackamas County, Ore.; and 10,000 customers in Wichita, Kan. — and that was just during two particularly busy days in June. A month later, there were two separate P.O.C.B.S., as I’ve come to call power outages caused by squirrels, around the small town of Evergreen, Mont., on a single day.”

There are of course numerous other examples of squirrels causing havoc to local communities, and it isn’t just limited to power outages, although they are the bulk of the problem. In Portland, for example, squirrels caused 9,200 customers on July 13, 140 customers on July 23, and 7,400 customers on July 26 to be without electricity, in the height of summer.

According to the opinion piece, the electricity grid in America is “actually designed to handle this violent interruption.” If the squirrel interferes with the wires, gets electrocuted, and falls to the ground, the flow of electricity resumes and there are no further issues.

But if the animal gets stuck during electrocution and doesn’t fall to the ground, the squirrel can trigger a so-called continuous fault, interrupting the restarted flow of electricity, as occurred in Silicon Valley.