LANDIS — Some Landis residents and even town hall experienced power outages Thursday after a squirrel caused damage to a substation. 

Logan Kureczka, the Duke Energy lead communications director, described the situation, which occurred shortly before 11 a.m., as a “transmission outage” and added that the company is working with the town to get it repaired. 

“At the substation where we feed the power to the Town of Landis, that is where the squirrel got in,” Kureczka said. 

Transmission towers transfer energy from origin points like a power plant to substations, which reduce voltage and transfer power to distribution centers, in this case, the Landis Electric Department. 

Duke Energy was unable to provide an exact number of the outages impacting Landis customers. Kureczka indicated that information would be available from the town. 

“We have to make a repair on our transmission side,” Kureczka said. “Then once we make that repair, (Landis) can restore power to their customers.”

Landis Mayor Meredith Smith indicated shortly after 1:30 p.m. that they were still waiting for repairs on the Duke Energy side.