Toronto Hydro says power has been restored after a large outage caused by a squirrel impacted thousands of people in the downtown area.

The company’s outage map showed the disruption started at 10:23 a.m. when the animal came into contact with power equipment.

Toronto Hydro says power was fully restored at about 1:30 p.m.

It says the outage impacted the areas between Rosedale Valley Road south to the Gardiner Expressway, and Church Street east to the Don Valley Parkway.

It says about 6,500 customers were affected by the disruption.

More than 5,000 people in Toronto lost power in February after a raccoon came into contact with a Hydro One transmission station.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 15, 2024.

© 2024 The Canadian Press. All rights reserved., source Canadian Press DataFile