Squirrel knocks out power in Downtown Lynchburg, impacting thousands' morning routines

LYNCHBURG, Va. (WSET) — Thousands of Downtown Lynchburg residents and workers are back with power after an outage on Tuesday morning.

Around 8:30 a.m. a swatch of the area went dark.

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"There is a power outage in the Downtown Lynchburg/5th Street area. AEP is aware." Lynchburg DES said in a tweet. "Please use caution while traveling and treat all stop lights without power as a 4-way stop."

According to AEP, the area was facing three separate outages, totaling just over 2,550 customers without power.

On the AEP Outage Map, the company listed "animal contact" as a cause of the outage.

AEP further clarified to ABC13 that a squirrel made contact with equipment in one of our substations causing the power outage.

At 11:45 a.m., it appears the power has been restored to downtown residents, according to AEP's Outage Map.