Power restored to most after major San Francisco outage
Power has been restored to most of the 130,000 homes and businesses in San Francisco affected by the massive outage that caused major disruptions in the US city.
Pacific Gas and Electric Co.’s outage map showed more than 20,000 customers were still without power as of Sunday morning (about 16 hours after the problem began) and crews were working to fully restore service.
The outage, which occurred shortly after 1pm on Saturday, left a large, growing area in the northern part of the city without power.
At its peak, the outage represented roughly a third of the utility’s customers in the city.
Mayor Daniel Lurie asked residents in X to stay home if possible and use flashlights instead of candles for safety.
Social media posts and local media reported that restaurants and stores were closed en masse and street lights and Christmas decorations were darkened on Saturday, one of the busiest shopping days of the year.
San Francisco’s Department of Emergency Management said there were “significant public transportation disruptions” across the city in X and urged residents to avoid nonessential travel and treat traffic lights as four-way stops.
Waymo, the operator of driverless ride-hailing vehicles, has suspended its services.
At least one video posted on social media appeared to show a Waymo vehicle stopped in the middle of the intersection.
Some of the outages were caused by a fire at a PG&E substation at 8th and Mission streets, fire officials told the X around 3:15 p.m.
The exact cause remained under investigation.
At 4 p.m., PG&E reported it had stabilized the grid at X and no further outages were expected.
with DPA
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