Power nearly restored in San Francisco after widespread outage Saturday
Power continues to be restored to tens of thousands of San Francisco businesses and residences following a Saturday outage that affected some 130,000 customers, according to Pacific Gas & Electric Company (PG&E).
The outage was caused by a fire at an electrical substation, according to PG&E.
By Sunday evening, there remained about 14,000 customers who were still without service, PG&E said.
The company said it expects to restore power to all remaining customers impacted by the outage by 2 p.m. on Monday.
"PG&E crews will continue to work until all customers have been restored," the company said.
While the damage to the substation was "significant and extensive," there were no injures to PG&E workers or the public, PG&E said.
"The damage from the fire in our substation was extensive and the repairs and safe restoration will be complex. We will continue working until all customers are restored," PG&E said in an early afternoon update Sunday. "We encourage customers to be safe."
The first outages were reported at around 1 p.m. Saturday, according to PG&E, with the grid stabilized by 4:30 p.m., halting any additional outages. Fire officials brought the substation fire under control by 6 p.m., according to San Francisco ABC station KGO.
The blackout occurred when the city was teeming with tourists and holiday shoppers. The lack of power snarled traffic throughout the affected areas as traffic signals remained inoperative.
"The Saturday before Christmas is historically once of the busiest shopping days of the year," San Francisco Board of Supervisors member Matt Dorsey told KGO. "This is the worst time that PG&E could have a problem."
The cause of the substation fire remains under investigation, according to PG&E.
