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Squirrel Triggers Thanksgiving Power Outage On The Westside

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Be careful up there, squirrel! (Photo by Chris Yarzab via the LAist Featured Photos pool on Flickr)

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Some people on the Westside had their Thanksgiving briefly interrupted thanks to a power outage sparked by a wayward squirrel.On Thursday afternoon around 3:30 p.m., 9,900 customers in Marina de Rey and Westchester were affected by a power outage when a distribution station near LAX went down. According to NBC Los Angeles, an LADWP crew discovered that a squirrel made its way onto a circuit breaker.

Power was restored around 4:45 p.m., allowing people to resume watching football and avoid having to talk politics with their uncle.

Unfortunately, the squirrel probably did not enjoy the rest of the holiday. "For lack of a better word, it would have created an explosion," LADWP spokesman Albert Rodriguez told LAist about the squirrel's encounter with the high-voltage circuit breaker.

Over in Massachusetts, a few hundred customers were also briefly without power on Thanksgiving morning due to a squirrel.

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