Crow causes outage, leaving 15,000 homes and businesses in San Fernando Valley without power

About 15,000 homes and businesses were without power Thursday after a crow came into contact with a 34,500-volt circuit breaker in Valley Village.

Crews with the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power were working to restore power to customers in Valley Village, Valley Glen and Studio City, said Ellen Cheng, the utility company’s spokeswoman.

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The outage was reported at 8:48 a.m. at distributing station 57 in Valley Village, where crews found the crow, according to the utility. There is no estimate on when power will be restored.

Outages of this magnitude usually are resolved quickly by switching circuits from one bank to another, but in this case, that has not resolved the problem.

A large remote electric transformer called a “hog wagon” will be moved into the area to help restore power, according to the utility.

This article will be updated as new information becomes available.

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UPDATES:

1:06 p.m.: This article was updated with the cause of the outage.

12:33 p.m.: This article was updated with new numbers of those affected by the outage and additional areas affected.

This article was originally published at 10:58 a.m.