LONG BEACH, Calif. (AP) A fire in an underground vault knocked out power to at least 30,000 customers in downtown Long Beach on Thursday, just two weeks after a series of similar fires left people in the same area in the dark for three days.
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City News Service says power was restored by about 5 p.m. Saturday to the final 70 Southern California Edison customers.
This was the second time in the past month that thousands of residents and businesses in downtown Long Beach were forced to endure an extended outage.
“There’ll be two-man crews and they’re going to inspect those vaults to ensure they’re safe and that they can perform the way they’re supposed to, which is safe and reliably”, Conroy said. “Crews are working hard to make repairs as safely and as quickly as possible”.
Long Beach officials have been upset with Edison over the second outage, expressing frustration with further disruption.
That number dropped to about 1,000 by late Thursday and 270 by Saturday morning. “So we’ll be continuing to work with SCE to try to get those answers, and SCE wants those answers as well to prevent any future occurrences”. About 30,000 customers were initially left without power that night within the area of Spring Avenue to Shoreline Drive and from Santa Fe to Alamitos avenues.
SCE had hoped that power could have been restored by Friday but discovered the damages were more extensive than previously thought.
Customers being switched off generators were warned to expect an outage that could last up to 45 minutes.
However, the problem also stretched beyond Long Beach neighborhoods and onto surrounding freeways.
As of Saturday morning, 260 customers are without a permanent source of electricity, but 190 of those are now on 10 generators, according to a press release from the city.
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This story has been updated.
