Squirrel Cuts Power To 3,000 Weymouth Homes

WEYMOUTH, MA — A squirrel interfering with a power line cut off power to thousands of homes on Friday.

About 3,400 homes lost power between 11:25 p.m. and 12:08 p.m., after the little critter cut power at a line on Georgia Road, National Grid spokeswoman Christine Milligan told Patch. The outages were mostly in Weymouth, but Milligan said a few homes in Braintree also lost power. As expected, the squirrel did not survive.

"We had to inspect equipment and make sure it was safe to energize," Milligan said. "All's well now. There are no crews out working on it at this time."

Milligan said it's "fairly common" for squirrels to cause power outages. In September 2016, one squirrel cut power to more than 4,000 homes in Waltham and Watertown.

Squirrel-induced usually tend to be more localized, according to Business Insider. But they are generally fixed faster than outages storms cause, since the little critter can only chew so much wire before getting electrocuted.

This doesn't mean a squirrel can't cause significant damage. Squirrel-induced outages have affected as many as 13,000 people at a time, and in some cases, like an outage in Montana, costs the state $11 million.