Squirrel in substation knocks out power to more than 10,000 Pacific Power customers in southern Bend; all restored

(Update: Squirrel the culprit)

BEND, Ore. (KTVZ) – More than 10,000 Pacific Power customers lost service in southern Bend Tuesday morning, and the cause was a familiar culprit: a squirrel.

"A squirrel got into our substation serving the area and caused some damage, resulting in a blown fuse," spokesman Simon Gutierrez said.

The utility’s outage map indicated the first reports of the outage came in around 7:35 a.m. and it was affecting 6,476 customers as of 8:45 a.m., a number that rose to 10,606 by 9:15 a.m. but was down to 1,931 by 10:45 a.m. All power was back on by late morning.

The outage centered on the Cleveland Avenue substation area east of Highway 97, and the initial restoration time indicated was before 6 p.m.

Gutierrez noted earlier that "the entire area impacted is on our enhanced safety settings due to wildfire risk."

A commenter on the Bend subreddit (Reddit page) indicated they heard a loud bang and lost power, and that the initial website post indicated a damaged line. Some had power restored within an hour, while others were still without service for some time.

Squirrels scampering into unfortunate spots have knocked out power to thousands in Bend several times over the years, most recently last October.