Squirrel responsible for ‘large scale power outage’ in New Westminster

A squirrel was behind a “large-scale power outage” across New Westminster Saturday morning, BC Hydro says.

The animal entered the city’s main substation, causing several neighbourhoods to lose service shortly before 9:30 a.m.

“Our electricians were sent to site, and when they arrived on site, they did find a squirrel in the substation,” said Mora Scott, BC Hydro spokesperson.

“We do see animals coming into contact with our electrical equipment from time to time as well as birds so it does happen.”

Scott says service was restored within an hour or so.

The downtown and uptown areas, Sapperton, Glenbrook North, and Queen’s Park were affected.

As well, the city says the Queen’s Park Sportsplex had been evacuated due to the outage.

It isn’t clear how many homes were affected.

Why New Westminster outages don’t appear on BC Hydro outage list

Some residents who woke up with no power Saturday morning may have been surprised to see that the outage wasn’t appearing on BC Hydro’s outage list.

This is because, unlike other municipalities across B.C., New Westminster has its own utility, Scott said.

“[BC Hydro’s] transmission lines feed electricity to the City of New Westminster,” Scott said.

“It does have its own power line technicians that deal with the electrical service in the city.”