Company: Crows knocked out power to 100,000 in 3 states

A utility company says two crows triggered a power outage in mid-July that knocked out service to about 100,000 customers in three Western states.

Rocky Mountain Power spokesman David Eskelsen tells the Post Register newspaper (http://bit.ly/2dugkoM) in a Thursday story that an investigation shows the crows touched a capacitor bank — a device that controls voltage — at a substation in southwest Idaho.

Eskelsen says the capacitor bank caught fire, and a separate device that should have rerouted electricity malfunctioned, sending the entire substation offline.

Customers in eastern Idaho, western Wyoming and southern Montana lost power for about three hours.

Rocky Mountain Power says upgrades have been made to the damaged substation.

The company says the crows were vaporized in the incident.