Power Outage Blamed on Squirrel
Written by Dan Fischer on October 17, 2018
A squirrel scurrying along a high voltage utility line near city hall apparently triggered a power failure in Batavia affecting more than 5,000 customers of National Grid.
The outage occurred at 12:55p.m. Wednesday afternoon.
Batavia city firemen were called to put out a transformer fire on a utility pole near city hall. At about the same time, a high voltage line came down on Evans Street causing a further outage.
At the peak of the outage National Grid reported more than 5,300 customers were without electric service in various parts of the city and town of Batavia and south to the town of Alexander.
Traffic signals were inoperative at several intersections.
Full service was restored by 3 p.m. The squirrel paid the ultimate price for his antics.
