By JIMMY LAWTON

More than 5,300 people are without power in northern St. Lawrence County after a squirrel came into contact with a tranmission line at 3:40 p.m. causing it to short, according to National Grid Spokeswoman Virginia Limmiatis.

A National Grid employee said about 30 workers were being deployed to address the problem.

The substation experiencing problems supplies power to most of Ogdensburg and the surrounding communities along the St. Lawrence River including Morristown and Lisbon.

Limmiatis estimated the majority of customers would have power by  7 p.m.

The majority of the outages are in Ogdensburg, where about 3,289 residents lost power. In Oswegatchie more than 1,500 people were without power.

Other communities impacted by the outage were Morristown with about 251 customers and Lisbon with approximately 65 customers.

Outages were also reported in Hammond and Clifton, but those outages may not be related.

A similar incident knocked out power in Ogdensburg in 2009.