A tenacious Portola Valley rat, now deceased, shut down electrical service at The Sequoias retirement community on the morning of Monday, Nov. 9, when it managed to get into a large and supposedly rodent-proofed electrical shed on the grounds and place itself across the main circuit breaker.

Everything at 501 Portola Road went dark. Power at the health-care facilities came back up under on-site generator power and residents did have a hot dinner. But for some 26 hours, employees in the non-medical offices and about 200 residents in apartments had to make do with flashlights and cold-water ablutions.

"We got some good practice on where our flashlights are and where our batteries are," resident and Almanac senior correspondent Marion Softky said in an interview. "I think it was a good lesson for us."

Ron Petersen, administrator for health services at The Sequoias, agreed. "If it was a disaster drill, I would have given it an A-plus," he told The Almanac.

But 26 hours? For a circuit breaker that did what it was supposed to do? When it died, the rat, which lost all its hair and was literally petrified by the incident, had apparently created "a fireball, an electrical storm inside there" that damaged insulation on nearby components, Mr. Petersen said.

Since The Sequoias owns the equipment, Pacific Gas & Electric Corp., which owns and maintains the town's electrical grid, played a limited role in getting power restored.

PG&E briefly shut down a section of the grid along Portola Road after the outage to allow The Sequoias to electrically isolate itself before beginning repairs, then reconnected the system to the grid after repairs were complete, PG&E spokesman Joe Molica said in an interview, adding: "We work with our customers as much as we can to assist them."

The outage required a private electrician with specialized equipment to safely bring the system back up, Mr. Petersen said. The electrician under contract with The Sequoias was busy in Oakland and unavailable, Mr. Petersen said, until PG&E arrived on that site to reconnect the grid over there.

"That created a delay of seven hours," Mr. Petersen said. Asked to comment, Mr. Molica said he didn't know anything about that part of the day's events.

Meanwhile, The Sequoias' contract electrician arranged for a substitute who, as it turned out, did not have the necessary equipment to test the breaker, Mr. Petersen said. By the time the contract electrician in Oakland was free to leave, the evening rush hour had begun, delaying his arrival even more.

The contract electrician had the system ready for reconnection to the grid by 11:30 p.m. but despite "numerous" late-night calls to PG&E, the company did not restore power until around 11 a.m. the next day, Mr. Petersen said.

PG&E, Mr. Molica said, advised The Sequoias to "please call us as soon as the electrical work is done and we'll be back out there to connect the grid." PG&E records show that call coming in at 7 a.m., with power restored at 11:14 a.m., Mr. Molica said.

Marion Softky contributed reporting for this story.