Over a thousand start Memorial Day without power, squirrel blamed

CHARLESTON, S.C. (WCIV) -- Over a thousand people on the peninsula woke up Monday morning without power.

According to the SCE&G outage map, 1,467 customers on the west side of downtown were without power from White Point Gardens all the way up to Hampton Park. The outage affected homes and traffic lights.

By 10 a.m. many had power restored with the outage area reduced to just south of Broad.

About 50 homes in the outage area had no estimated restoration time, with SCE&G saying it could take up to three hours.

Crews worked to fix the problem and had power up by 11 a.m.

According to SCE&G spokesperson Stephanie Jones, the outage was caused by a squirrel on the power line.

Jones say it is a common occurrence. A quick search on the Internet will show the damage a squirrel can do to a power line, and vice versa (Warning: some images may be graphic).

In 2010, a squirrel chewed through the power lines near Hanahan High School, killing power to the school and closing it down for the day.