Buckhead power outage: Utility blaming a squirrel
An animal, probably a squirrel, tangled with utility equipment in a Buckhead substation Monday afternoon and paid the ultimate price.
The animal was too burned to identify, but a Georgia Power spokesman said it looked kind of like a squirrel and he blamed it for the 18-minute outage that struck the area around 3:45 p.m.
"An animal got into equipment," utility spokesman Jeff Wilson said. "Indications are it was a squirrel."
There was no immediate count on the number of customers who lost power, but Wilson said office towers and MARTA were affected. He said at 4:40 p.m. that power was restored to MARTA but that the transit agency was still working to bring its equipment back online.
A MARTA spokeswoman said a "central control outage" was causing 15-minute delays on the lines going through Buckhead to both North Springs and Doraville. But the spokeswoman, Cara Hodgson, said the problem was not connected to the power outage.
About the Author
Ty Tagami is a staff writer for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Since joining the newspaper in 2002, he has written about everything from hurricanes to homelessness. He has deep experience covering local government and education, and can often be found under the Gold Dome when lawmakers meet or in a school somewhere in the state.
