Squirrel causes outage: 1,800 CEC customers in SE Bend lose power for nearly an hour

Sadly, the small animal did not survive the encounter

BEND, Ore. (KTVZ) – About 1,800 Central Electric Cooperative members in southeast Bend lost power for nearly an hour Thursday afternoon for the smallest of reasons: a wayward squirrel, which did not survive a transformer encounter.

A squirrel came into contact with a transfer and caused the outage that began around 2:35 p.m., according to Brent Ten Pas, CEC’s director of member and public relations.

A crew had the power restored roughly 50 minutes later, Ten Pas said, also confirming the squirrel’s demise.

It's not the first such squirrel-related outage in Bend -- and not even the first this year. More than 1,400 Pacific Power customers lost power in early April, many of them downtown businesses. Other animal-related outages have occurred over the years.