Squirrel incidents cause thousands of Missoulians to lose power over weekend

A slew of power outages hit some Missoula neighborhoods over the weekend, reportedly caused by squirrels meddling in electrical equipment.

On website Nextdoor, Missoulians in the Slant Streets and Rose Park areas, Riverfront and Franklin neighborhoods posted about having no power throughout the weekend. Power went out briefly Saturday morning, Sunday morning and Sunday evening, too. 

“We did have a significant outage over the weekend that impacted about 14,500 customers in Missoula,” Northwestern Energy spokesperson Brandy Powers wrote in an email. “Our crews found a squirrel in a substation that caused damage to equipment that needed to be repaired.”

Powers said the sporadic outages on both Saturday and Sunday were all squirrel-related.

“Squirrels are one of the leading causes of outages and that certainly came into play this weekend,” she wrote. The energy company posted on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, three times over the weekend about outages in the Missoula area.

People are also reading…

As of Monday morning, Northwestern Energy showed one Missoula outage in the South Avenue and Higgins Avenue area. Crews were at the corner of Beckwith Street and Woodford Street late Sunday night working on a

View Source