Thousands Remain Without Power Following Electrical Fire

Efforts continued this afternoon to restore electrical service to about 2,600 Southern California Edison customers whose power was knocked out when three underground electrical vaults caught fire in downtown Long Beach.

The fires were reported about 3:40 p.m. Wednesday, and initially cut power to around 4,800 customers, Edison said.

Long Beach Fire Department spokesman Jake Heflin said the vaults were beneath the 400 block of Third Street, and near the intersections of Pacific Avenue and 9th Street and Pine Avenue and Nardo Way.

No injuries were reported but the outage left large residential areas adjoining downtown businesses without power overnight.

According to SCE’s outage web site, about 2,600 customers were without electricity this afternoon.

About 10 a.m., authorities announced that restoration of service would require intermittent shutting off of all electricity for varying periods of time within substations in various parts of the following area: Cherry Avenue to the east, Willow Street to the north, the Long Beach (710) Freeway to the west, and Shoreline Drive to the south.

The work to restore service was “moving forward” throughout the affected power grid, Heflin told City News Service about 1 p.m. It was not immediately known how long the repair work would take.

About 1:15 p.m., Long Beach police announced the following street closures because of the outages: Ocean Boulevard between Magnolia and Pacific avenues; and Third Street between Magnolia and Cedar avenues.

Meanwhile, police in the neighboring city of Signal Hill announced that they were monitoring the situation in case the planned outages for repair work affected their city.

City News Service