Citing Millions in Losses, Mayor Demands Investigation of Power Outages

Southern California Edison customers in downtown Long Beach who had been getting power from temporary generators were returned to the electricity grid Sunday, the utility reported.

At least 30,000 customers were initially affected by a vault fire that occurred at 4:15 p.m. Thursday near 10th Street and Pine Avenue, SCE spokeswoman Susan Cox said. It was the second such outage after a vault blast in as many weeks.

Service was returned to the last of about 70 utility customers who had been without service were back online as of 5 p.m. Saturday, according to acting Long Beach public information officer Kerry Gerot.

Edison crews, some of them brought in from across the utility’s service area, began systematically checking about 300 underground vaults for potential heating, cable and component abnormalities at about 10 a.m. on Friday, spokeswoman Susan Cox said.

Inspections were completed by about 5:30 p.m. on Friday on all but four vaults, according to Gerot, who said the remaining four were inaccessible and would be examined as soon as possible.

It’s still unclear what caused the blast, but Cox said the problem was similar to underground electrical vault fires that knocked out power to 4,800 customers on July 15.

In that case, service wasn’t restored until July 19. No injuries were reported as a result of those fires, but some cast-iron manhole covers were blasted into the air and came down amid midday traffic.

Long Beach Mayor Robert Garcia has said the outages have had a negative economic impact of up to millions of dollars and wants the situation to be investigated by the state Public Utilities Commission.

City News Service