Odd News

Funny as it may sound for 117 customers of Xcel Energy were left in total darkness after they power was knocked out. The suicidal squirrels not only that they created a black out, but also they perished in the unfortunate incident that took place on Monday. Brian Elwood, a spokesman for Xcel Energy, stated that measures have to be taken in order to prevent such incidents from happening again. The first city affected by the squirrel's contact with an overhead transformer was Wisconsin and the 117 customers dealt with the consequences. In less than an hour the power was restored by repair crews. Unfortunately for the little animal it did not survived, only its remains were found afterwards. 40 miles away from the first power outage, Ironwood, Michigan, on Monday morning a second squirrel get into another substation, causing an outage that affected more than 1,400 customers in Ironwood and two nearby communities, according to Elwood. One of the persons that suffered deeply due to the power blackout was Rodney Johnson who was stuck on an elevator at the city's Enterprise Center. The firefighters struggled for a couple of minutes to open the door and during that time Johnson prayed to make it to Thanksgiving, because of his past record of claustrophobia. When they finally succeeded to get him out, he almost knocked out a firefighter just to get out of there. Elwood says they can't help it; the curious animals cannot be kept away from lines although they are one of the leading causes of outages, trailing only severe weather. They learnt just like the people with bird feeders who try to keep the squirrels out, that in fact squirrels always find a way to get back in. Stay connected and follow the line of the events, you might get to the bottom of a solution.

related story: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071120/ap_on_re_us/odd_squirrel_outages;_ylt=ArxBhWqQRh4OV.EfF6XdRQ6s0NUE

by Claudia Sonea for PocketNews (http://pocketnews.tv)

PocketNews is a new real-time news broadcaster delivering the latest and hottest news right to your pocket ! With global clients who want to be kept up to date, PocketNews is everyone's way of keeping in touch with the World.