Zapped squirrel caused outage

A zapped squirrel created a minor electrical outage this morning, causing some Clark County web services to be rebooted.

While the outage was of the blink-and-you-miss-it variety for most affected residents in downtown Vancouver, the county has had to reboot some of its online services after they briefly went down. The outage happened at 5:20 a.m.

County websites and mobile devices connected to the county’s system went down as a result of the outage. Many of the problems have been taken care of, the county says.

Emergency services, such as 911, were not affected by the power outage. Some systems, which are normally automated by Clark Regional Emergency Services Agency, are being handled manually, however.

It’s not uncommon for wayward wildlife to cause power outages, said Erica Erland, a spokeswoman for the Clark PUD.

“This time of year,” Erland said of an outage, “it’s usually caused by trees or wildlife.”

She said service had been renewed for most people.