COLUMBIA, Pa. (AP) - Officials say a power outage that affected 2,471 people and forced an elementary school to close in southeastern Pennsylvania was caused by a squirrel.
Park Elementary School in Columbia had to close Tuesday morning after the critter came into contact with a primary wire, starting a fire and causing the wires to fall.
Officials say no one was injured in the incident.
PPL crews managed to restore electricity to all but 252 people within a few hours.
PPL Electric Utilities spokeswoman Jessica Long tells LNP (https://bit.ly/1B9Uv2f) the squirrel also caused a circuit breaker to trip and cause fuses in a transformer to malfunction, knocking out power for 21 customers.
PPL has been adding animal guard insulators at the end of transformers to prevent these types of incidents.
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Information from: LNP, https://lancasteronline.com
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