Hundreds of Power Outages in the US Are Caused by…Squirrels?
When you think of power outages in this country, you generally think of weather related incidents and natural disasters – things like floods, fire, ice storms, heat waves and tornadoes.
It’s true, many power outages can be attributed to these events. However, believe it or not, many of the power outages that occur in the US are not the result of bad weather, but instead the result of squirrels and other small animals.
Yes, squirrels! And incidents seem to be on the rise. In fact, the number of incidents has significantly risen since we last touched on the squirrel issue in 2014. This squirrel problem is noteworthy enough that there is even a tongue-in-cheek website devoted to tracking power outages, or “cyber squirrel attacks” across the world: http://cybersquirrel1.com/ Even the Eaton Blackout Tracker lists animal related outages as causing 5% of all outages country-wide.