Beavers in the news

from the Missoulian

POWER OUTAGE UPDATE: Beaver chewing cottonwood causes widespread outage; all electricity now restored
Posted on May 28
By ALLISON MAIER for the Missoulian

A beaver and a cottonwood tree caused a widespread power outage early Thursday, leaving NorthWestern Energy workers scrambling for 10 hours to restore electricity to thousands of customers from Missoula to Charlo Heights south of Hamilton, said spokesperson Claudia Rapkoch.

The outage occurred at about 2 a.m., affecting residents from south Missoula through the Bitterroot Valley, Rapkoch said. Power was restored to most of the customers by 7 a.m., and all of the electricity was back on by noon.

About 5,400 customers in upper and lower Miller Creek, the South Hills and Lolo were affected, in addition to about 2,000 in the Bitterroot Valley, Rapkoch said.

The outage was caused after a cottonwood tree chewed by a beaver fell down on a power line. For unknown reasons, a breaker that should have prevented the line from overheating didn’t work, causing one of the power poles to catch fire and a couple of other small spot fires to start. The fires were quickly extinguished.

Rapkoch said everything was back in order by Thursday afternoon except for one power line, though it was not causing any outages.

“There is nothing significant in terms of damage,” she said.

Don't be deterred beaver. Keep on chewing.