SCE restores power to downtown customers
By Daily Press staff
DOWNTOWN Utility crews have been busy the last three days, working around the clock to restore power to more than 20,000 homes and businesses across the Los Angeles area, including some 1,000 customers in Santa Monica who lost power around 5 p.m. Thursday.
Officials from Southern California Edison said a faulty high-voltage cable was to blame for the Santa Monica outage, which affected those living just east of the busy Third Street Promenade.
While Edison crews restored power to 1,000 customers in just under one hour Thursday evening, roughly 20 homes and businesses didn’t get their lights turned back on until 6 a.m. the following day, said Edison spokesman Mark Olson.
“It was not the same circuit that we have been having problems with in the downtown area,” Olson said, referring to the Sun Tower circuit, which supplies power to most of the promenade and has been the source of frustration for many business owners because it had the tendency to malfunction during the warm summer months.
“We are continuing to upgrade the system downtown,” Olson said.
As for the windstorms that have kept customers in the Hollywood Hills and Los Angeles areas without electricity since Wednesday evening, all service was restored before dawn Friday, DWP spokesman Joseph Ramallo said.
Fierce winds Wednesday night and early yesterday were blamed for outages affecting more than 19,000 DWP customers, officials said. Gusts tore down utility poles, snapped power poles like toothpicks, and sent tree limbs and whole trees crashing down on power lines.
The winds on Wednesday and early Thursday prompted utility crews to work around the clock for the second time this week. Winds gusting 60 mph to 100 mph in parts of Los Angeles County on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day knocked out power to nearly 10,000 customers.
According to the National Weather Service, another potentially damaging wind event is expected Monday — New Year’s Eve, extending into New Year’s Day.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on December 29, 2007. Read the original PDF.