25 July 2012 / #hydro #squirrels Squirrels (and a bird) to blame for recent hydro outages in StittsvilleJust reading through city councillor Shad Quadri’s weekly newsletter. There’s a note about some recent power outages in Stittsville :_ My office has received inquiries from some residents in Stittsville who were experiencing power outages. Hydro Ottawa has investigated three recent outages affecting customers in Stittsville between July 4th and July 10th. In all three cases, the outages were caused by animal contact on the overhead system as follows: __ ** July 4th 5:40 am – 7:08 am ** _ _ Squirrel contact on Johnwoods Street _ _ Momentary outage for 2756 customers _ _ 4 customers remained out until 7:08am __ ** July 8th 9:01 am – 1:20 pm ** _ _ Squirrel contact on Johnwoods Street (same location) _ _ Auto reclose for 2756 customers _ _ 4 customers remained out until 1:20pm __ ** July 10th 5:08 am – 10:20 am ** _ _ Bird Contact on Hazeldean Road _ _ Auto reclose for 2756 customers _ _ 1 customer remained out until 10:20am __ In the Johnwoods location, Hydro Ottawa field crews have installed animal guards in an effort prevent further animal interference. __ While these momentary outages do cause unfortunate inconvenience to their customers, Hydro Ottawa is satisfied with the effectiveness of our system equipment. In each of these events, protective devices installed as part of their ongoing Stittsville reliability efforts have worked as intended to clear the failure and automatically restore the majority of affected customers. __ If you have any further questions on these outages, please do not hesitate to contact Greg McAuley, _ _ Supervisor System Operations, Hydro Ottawa Limited at 613-738-5499, extension 7182. __ Please also remember that to report outages or to receive outages updates to contact Hydro Ottawa at _ _ 613-738-0188. _** See also: ** Ottawa Services & Utilities GuideIf you liked this post, please consider subscribing to our blog via email, Twitter, Facebook or RSS. Thank you.