Power Outages Leave Thousands in the Dark in the South Bay

High demand amid hot temperatures was blamed for overloading circuits that caused a power outage impacting more than 3,000 Southern California Edison customers in the South Bay tonight, SCE officials said.

Equipment failed shortly after 8 p.m. in the area of 177th Street and Answorth Avenue in Torrance, SCE spokesman David Song told City News Service.

By about 8:45 p.m., service had been restored to all but 205 customers, Song said.

An estimated time of power restoration for the rest of the impacted area was not available, he said.

Other outages were affecting downtown and West Los Angeles in the Department of Water Power territory, an official with that utility said.

Service was restored this evening to about 11,500 DWP customers in San Pedro who lost power after a construction crew damaged an underground line and other circuits were overloaded in the aftermath of the mishap, according to DWP spokeswoman Carol Tucker.

Officials urged utility customers to reduce their power consumption when possible to ease demand on circuits.

City News Service