updatedBird causes SV blackout on Monday

This story has been updated
 
A small bird caught in the power lines, according to Pacific Gas and Electric Co., caused an outage that left nearly 2,900 businesses and homes in Scotts Valley without electricity Monday afternoon.
As temperatures approached 100 degrees, a half-hour outage struck northern Scotts Valley at about 3:19 p.m.
PG&E spokewoman Monica Tell said 2,861 customers lost power on Scotts Valley Drive, on Highway 17 from Glenwood Drive to Glen Canyon Road and along Granite Creek Road.
Electricity was restored to all but 743 customers by 3:55 p.m. and fully restored by 4:30 p.m.
PG&E crews reportedly found the bird in the lines on the corner of Scott Court and Club Drive, near the Borland campus. PG&E officials were unable to provide more details about how the bird caused the lines to fail.
“We have outages caused by birds or squirrels,” Tell said. “We do see those often.”
About half the traffic lights in Scotts Valley were disabled by the loss of power, while the other half continued to function. Reserve officers from Scotts Valley Police Department placed flares at the traffic lights that were not working.
Another power outage occurred last week when a transformer blew in a different location. On Sept. 27, the power went out at about 2 p.m. in many areas before returning 10 to 15 minutes later. The weather was in the mid-80s that day.
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