Newmarket-Tay Power Distribution has confirmed that a squirrel caused a cascading impact on a pole, knocking out power to leave more than 5,000 residents without electricity Aug. 28.
A follow-up technical report shows the animal contact was the inciting incident, according to Alex Braletic, NT Power’s vice-president, engineering and operations. A squirrel on a power pole made contact with a critical switch, causing a large outage that cascaded onto the Hydro One circuit. The outage that occurred impacted residents around the Mulock and Bayview area.
The loud bang many residents reported was from that initial squirrel contact, Braletic said. The subsequent impact made the Hydro One equipment go into protection mode, making the outage more widespread and requiring several hours to fix.
“We do take preventive measures for that, but unfortunately, they are going to get in, and squirrels use the wires as their own personal highway,” he said. “Animal contact does occur not just for Newmarket, it occurs for all of the other utilities.”
The power outage began around 7 a.m. and took several hours to fix. Newmarket-Tay brought customers back online over time, with most back to full power by early afternoon. Some residents reported damage to electronics and appliances.
But it is not a scenario that could be solved with other equipment, he said. Although the damage to the pole — located at Bayview and Mulock — was addressed, Braletic said the report indicates they already had the best equipment available on it, and there was not anything that could be done to better avoid the situation.
“This is one of those extremely rare occurrences,” he said. “There isn’t much that can be done.”
The utility company initially reported that a squirrel was the suspected cause before Bralectic said the third-party report confirmed that.
Wildlife is something utility companies deal with, but it is not typically major in Newmarket, Braletic said.
“Animal factor isn’t a large issue for our utility,” he said, adding that this particular pole “does have a few different circuits on there.”
