Squirrel causes thousands to lose power in North Spokane

A squirrel appears to be the cause of temporary power outages that affected thousands in north Spokane Saturday morning.

Around 11:30 a.m., an Avista spokeswoman confirmed that 6,605 customers had been affected by the outages. She said the cause appears to have been a squirrel that came into contact with a substation and was electrocuted.

“A squirrel got into a substation and tripped equipment that took a transformer down, affecting 3 feeders,” the company tweeted.

“The squirrel usually doesn’t make it,” said Avista spokeswoman Kelly Conley.

Avista’s outage map showed power had been restored to the majority of households by 12:30 p.m.