Thousands of residents in Gatineau, Que. were out of power early Sunday morning after a raccoon entered a substation and triggered an outage. Hydro-Québec spokesperson Pascal Poinlane tells CTV News Ottawa the outage was reported at approximately 3 a.m. Sunday and impacted around 10,700 customers. Poinlane says there was no damage to the equipment at the substation, but the power had to be turned off as a precaution. “The protection systems triggered the de‑energization of the substation to protect the equipment,” he said in an email. Power remained turned off for less than 200 customers by 10:45 a.m. and was fully restored by 1:45 p.m. “It can happen several times a year, but usually it is caused by birds, not raccoons,” Poinlane said. Raccoons can occasionally pose a problem for utility companies as the animals are able to chew through critical equipment.
