LAKE COUNTY – A power outage Friday afternoon left thousands of customers from Lakeport to Cobb without power for several hours.

The outage began at 12:04 p.m., said Susan Simon, a spokesperson for Pacific Gas and Electric Co.

Initially, 13,000 customers in Lakeport and Kelseyville were affected, said Simon.

The power outage appeared to reach as far as Cobb, where a resident reported to Lake County News that the power also was out at his home Friday afternoon.

Within about an hour, according to Simon, all but 3,000 customers had their power restored.

By 5:30 p.m., there still remained 1,300 customers without power, said Simon, with the last part of the outage centered around Kelseyville.

Somewhere between 6 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. the last of the customers had the power go back on in their homes, Simon said.

The cause, said Simon, was a squirrel.

“A squirrel came in contact with a piece of equipment and as a result of that we lost power to three separate substations,” said Simon.

Simon did not have specifics on where it was precisely that the fatal meeting between squirrel and power equipment took place.

E-mail Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

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