Squirrel Raccoon Responsible for North Adams, Rte. 2 Outage
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NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — A squirrel is responsible for the power outage on Saturday night that left some 1,400 customers in North Adams in the dark for nearly two hours, including Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts.
National Grid spokesman David Graves said a squirrel got into a substation on Walker Street and damaged a piece of equipment. Some 28 customers in Clarksburg near the substation and another 410 along Route 2 in Florida were also affected. Power was restored at 11:27 p.m.
"All substations are equipped with anti-animal protections but squirrels can get into just about anywhere they want to go to get to a food source," said Graves.
The nosy critters are frequent disruptors of power service and have an uncanny ability to get into places they don't belong. A Google search on "squirrels power outages" returned 241,000 results in 0.14 seconds. A 2007 USA Today article (cutely named "Suicide squirrels driving utilities nuts") says the acrobatic rodents cost utitilies millions every year in equipment and manpower.
Three weeks ago, an errant crow apparently caused an arc at a substation in Greylock that cut off power to 7,000 customers in the city's West End and along Route 7 south on Saturday morning.
North Adams East End, Route 2 In The Dark
10:16PM / Saturday, April 02, 2011
NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — Nearly 2,000 National Grid customers are out of power in sections of the city and as far east as Drury along Route 2.
Power went out about 9:45 p.m. on Saturday; several customers on the east side of the city reported hearing a loud bang before the lights went out. National Grid's website says power is not expected to be back on until midnight. No further information was immediately available; if our readers have any information they are welcome to post here or at Facebook.com/iBerkshires.
