Power Outage In San Francisco Bay Area Affects 45,000. The Culprit? A Squirrel

More than 45,000 residents in San Francisco's East Bay area were affected by a power outage that was caused by a squirrel, while residents south of the city lost power due to temperature-related equipment failures.

The outage occurred on the evening of Monday, June 8, and left thousands of residents in San Pablo, Richmond, Oakland, Kensington, El Cerrito, Berkeley and Albany in the dark. Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) took to Twitter to confirm the power outage and revealed that the company was working quickly and safely to restore power as soon as possible.

Later the company also tweeted that power was virtually restored to all East Bay customers by 10:15 p.m. PDT.

The Twitter post did not reveal the cause of the power outage but JD Guidi, the power company's spokesperson, revealed the reason behind the power outage.

"The outage was caused by a squirrel that impacted equipment at our El Cerrito substation," says Guidi. "We do have crews on-site and multiple personnel working as safely and quickly as possible to restore power this evening."

Berkeley police stated that they received three separate calls of people stuck in elevators due to the power failure but all of them were rescued safely. The Downtown Berkeley BART station was nonoperational for about two hours from 8:15 p.m. to 10:10 p.m.

Guidi also revealed that high temperatures contributed to the power outage as some equipment failed in the triple-digit temperatures. About 250 customers in Antioch were left without power at 5:30 p.m. Monday. Power was only restored in some areas by 8 p.m. The weather forecast for Monday called for highs in the 90s and low 100s in the area.

PG&E also confirmed that high-temperature-related power outages were also experienced in some southern cities such as San Jose and Gilroy. Equipment in these regions failed that left more than 4,100 residents without power in San Jose and 1,700 customers in Gilroy.

Photo: Jeremy Jenum | Flickr