Squirrel was culprit in West Plains power outage

A squirrel caused some West Plains residents to lose power Saturday.

Inland Power & Light announced on its Facebook page at 9:10 a.m. it was aware of an outage in the Hayford/West Plains service area. It noted crews were on their way to restore the power.

Two hours later, the energy company said crews found a squirrel that interrupted the power system, causing a fault, and they were working to restore power. It was unclear how many customers lost power.

All Inland Power customers, except five in Whitman County, and all Avista customers had power Saturday night.