GENESEO – One blunder by an acorn-loving rodent blacked out the homes of groggy Geneseo residents on the Rochester Gas and Electric (RG&E) power grid for more than three hours Friday morning.
According to RG&E’s outage estimates, approximately 716 residents were without power from 7:20a.m. to 10:18a.m., after a squirrel apparently took a wrong step on a power line outside of 38 Crossett Road in Geneseo and the resulting electric bast knocked out power on parts of Highland Road, Oak Street, Prospect Street, and North Street. The squirrel did not survive to tell the tale.
“He split the aluminum on the wire for about a foot,” said Kailob Biehler, 22, part of the RG&E crew who promptly repaired the badly damaged line. “We definitely found a very dead squirrel under the broken line.”
The RG&E office at 56 Main Street in Geneseo monitored their local grid closely while repairs were made. Warren Reichert, 61, at the RG&E office filled in reporters on RG&E’s standard procedure when there is an outage, caused by squirrels or otherwise.
“If it’s going to be a five, six, seven hour outage,” said Reichert, “we switch the area from their downed primary circuit to a secondary circuit. That gives power back to a lot of homes, but there will still be a few at the edges without power. When the primary circuit is repaired, we switch them back and business goes on as usual.”
RG&E crews continued to make their way down Crossett Road Friday morning after power was restored, making additional repairs and directing traffic as needed.