Animals and weather the cause of brief summer power outages

North Bay Hydro officials says there have been a few brief power outages in the city this summer, but they haven’t happened because of issues with their electrical system.

in a release, North Bay Hydro says the outages have occurred in West Ferris and up Airport Hill because of animal contact and weather systems moving through the city.

The utility says they are receiving reports of up to 20 outages this summer with clocks blinking and TV’s and computers turning on and off, but CEO Todd Wilcox says their system is performing safely.

He says they do know of instances in which squirrels have come into contact with power lines and outages happen.

Wilcox says in storm events or animal contact cases their system clears and has to reset itself.

He says these incidents have been more frequent this year but the system is working really well.