SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - The Northwest Territories two major power providers are squabbling over who's to blame for the length of the power outage Tuesday, caused by a squirrel burrowing into a transformer at the Jackfish Lake substation.

Tuesday's power outage was caused by a burrowing squirrel at the Jackfish Lake substation. Contact with high voltage connections in the feed transformer caused the rodent's death. - photo courtesy of Mike Bradshaw

NWT Power Corporation spokesperson Mike Bradshaw said the corporation takes "accountability for the outage, even if it was a squirrel getting into the system, but we're not responsible for the length of the outage."

The power corporation generates the power that serves the city of Yellowknife and Northland Utilities (NUL) is the distribution company that services customers.

During a power outage, for safety reasons, the corporation needs authorization from the utility company before individual feeders can be closed, which restores power to the city.

Although it is a necessary safety feature to protect utility employees, the communication protocol delays restoration times, said Bradshaw.

Albert Bouchard, operations superintendent with Northland Utilities, said, "to my knowledge, we gave permission five minutes after the outage.

"From my perspective, they're trying to pass the buck to Northland Utilities."

Bouchard said because the squirrel caused the outage by coming in contact with high voltage connections in the feed transformer, there is "no doubt it was a generation issue" that caused the power outage.

"When a rodent, like a squirrel, gets in a transformer and it causes an outage, certainly it's going to take them a while to find out what the cause was and to restore the system because of the processes we have in place. That all does take time, there's no doubt about it," he said.

"I don't understand how they can't accept responsibility for the duration of the outage."

According to the incident report from Power Corp., the squirrel came into contact with the transformer at 2:36 p.m. and the power corporation began restoring power to the city at 2:52 p.m.

"Approval to re-close the final feeder was granted by NUL at (3:49) hours and the last Yellowknife customer had service restored," the report said.

Bouchard said Northland only has to give authorization to the power corporation once and that was done immediately after the power was lost.

The power corporation and utility company are having their monthly meeting on Monday. The top priority will be discussing how to better deal with outages, said Bouchard.

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