Curiosity killed not one, but two squirrels — and left Castle Rock residents without power

Earlier this week, nearly 5,700 homes in the Castle Rock area lost power. But this wasn’t the work of a storm, high winds or some other bout of bad weather. The culprit was much smaller and much furrier: squirrels. “We have the vast majority of the equipment covered up and protected at that substation, but where there's a will, there's a way,” said Cindy Newsome, director of communications and strategy at CORE Electric Cooperative. 17, a squirrel bypassed protective measures at CORE’s Castle Rock substation and touched equipment. The contact electrocuted the squirrel and caused a system fault, cutting power to approximately 4,400 members for more than two hours while crews restored service.

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Scoop News DeskCastle Rock, Colorado · Published Friday, September 18, 2026 at 4:52 PM UTCUpdated Saturday, September 19, 2026 at 4:01 AM UTC

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Curiosity killed not one, but two squirrels — and left Castle Rock residents without power - Colorado Public Radio. The following day, a second squirrel breached the gated facility and damaged distribution equipment, triggering a 40-minute outage that affected roughly 1,300 members. “If you think about the voltage at the substation level, that’s before it’s been distributed at a lower voltage to homes.