Area power outage caused by beaver: SaskPower Oct 30, 2017 10:00 AM

A beaver was responsible for leaving thousands of SaskPower customers without power yesterday.

SaskPower spokesperson Jordan Jackle said the outage was caused when a power pole south of Weldon, which had been partially chewed-through by a beaver, broke in the high winds, leaving a good portion of the province powerless. Power to Prince Albert was restored within about an hour, he said, but some areas south of the city were blacked out for as long as five hours.

“About 3,500 customers were without power for that full five hours,” Jackle said. “Our crews managed to reroute that power and they’ll be making some permanent fixes in coming days.”

Jackle said wildlife interactions with power equipment aren’t uncommon, and can often lead to issues. Wildlife is responsible for roughly a third of all outages in the province, he said, while the other two thirds are largely caused by weather or aging infrastructure.