Animal contact at Scarborough transmission station caused outages: Hydro One

An animal is to blame for “large-scale” outages across Toronto that plunged tens of thousands of residents into darkness on Friday.

Hydro One said “animal contact” with equipment at its Ellesmere transmission station resulted in neighbourhoods in midtown and Scarborough being without electricity for about half an hour.

Toronto Hydro had said the outages, which began just before 5:30 p.m., were due to a “loss of supply” from Hydro One.

At the peak of the outage, approximately 40,000 customers were without power.

Electricity began returning just before 6 p.m.

Toronto Hydro confirmed an hour later that all power had been restored to affected customers.

UPDATE: The cause of tonight’s outage affecting @TorontoHydro customers was due to animal contact with equipment at Ellesmere TS.

— Hydro One (@HydroOne) January 7, 2023