Power restored to 15,000 after crow takes out equipment in Valley Village

VALLEY VILLAGE, LOS ANGELES -- Power has been restored for 15,000 customers in the Valley Village area who went without electricity for most of Thursday because of a crow contacting some power equipment, officials said.

The outage began at 8:48 a.m., when the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power's Distributing Station 57 experienced an equipment failure. Crews later determined that a crow had come into contact with a 34,500-volt circuit breaker.

"When the crow made contact with that circuit breaker, it did a lot of damage in there," said DWP spokesman Juan Esparza.

Crews tried to switch circuits at the distributing station, but the initial efforts did not resolve the problem, the DWP said.

The outage affected traffic signals in the area and city crews directed traffic at busy intersections.

The power had been restored to all customers by 10 p.m., the agency said.

The DWP posted updates online on its web page and via Twitter.