BOISE - A blackout in downtown Boise knocked out power for almost three hours Friday night.

The first power outage happened around 5 p.m., and then again just after midnight, Saturday morning.

The city went black from 4th to 24th, covering Main to State street cutting power to businesses and residents.

Power crews and firefighters say two squirrels shorted a power line which then caught fire.

The general manager of Mazzah Mediterranean Grill says this is the third time this has happened this year.

"That's very ridiculous, if two squirrels can cause all this trouble they should find another way to deal with this problem," said Sam Bataineh.

His employees ended up transporting food to different locations in their personal vehicles.

Natalie Rhodes, a manager at Mazzah's says the outage cost them big bucks.

"It's unfortunate that it happened on a Friday night, when it's our busiest night," Rhodes said. "But there's really nothing you can do about squirrels."

Numerous fender benders occurred at intersections as well. Initially 1900 Idaho Power customers lost service for nearly three hours. As of Friday night, 640 were still waiting on service.