Toronto Hydro blames squirrel for downtown power outage

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A transformer fire in the downtown core that left thousands of Toronto Hydro customers without power was caused by a squirrel.

A spokesperson for Toronto Hydro confirmed to the Toronto Sun that power was fully restored at about 1:30 p.m.

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The outage affected about 6,500 of the hydro company’s customers in the areas between Rosedale Valley Rd. south to the Gardiner Expy., and Church St. east to the Don Valley Pkwy.

Traffic lights were reportedly down along Dundas St. W. from River St. to beyond Sherbourne St., as well as along parts of Richmond and Shuter Sts.

“We’re currently responding to an outage in the downtown area,” Toronto Hydro wrote in an X post Wednesday morning.

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“Crews are on site working as quickly and safely as possible to restore power to all affected customers.”

They added that they “appreciate everyone’s patience.”

One person posted a screenshot on X of the estimated restoration time in his area: 5:20 p.m.

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“We live in a third world country!!,” he wrote. “Outage that will take hours to fix. Shame on you! Time for a new CEO.”

A second ranted that the company doesn’t have “self-healing power grids,” while another X user asked, “How long is this going to take? This is so ridiculous, this always happens in this area.”

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