repairman
File photo.

Around 21,000 Southern California Edison (SCE) customers were affected by an early Saturday morning power outage at its peak, due to an underground cable failure at Ximeno and PCH in Long Beach, according to SCE officials. Power was restored to all customers around 4:00AM this morning.

According to SCE’s power outage map, 11 separate outages took place at 12:59AM. An SCE tweet, sent around 9:00AM, said the outage occurred at Ximeno and PCH.

 

At approximately 12:04AM Saturday morning, SCE officials reported an interruption at a circuit near Ximeno and PCH, SCE spokesperson Robert Villegas said, initially affecting 491 customers.

The Long Beach Fire Department and SCE crews responded, reporting smoke coming from the vault outside of the substation, according to Long Beach spokesperson Kerry Gerot. SCE then shut down the surrounding network—as they did in the previous major Long Beach power outages this past month—resulting in more affected residents, with the number reaching around 21,000 customers at its peak, said Villegas. 

SCE gave the estimated time of repair as 4:00AM. Power was restored to 18,964 customers at 1:27AM, and power restored to the remaining 2,021 customers around 3:50AM, according Villegas. He said the cause is not known. 

In an unrelated occurrence, the power outage map shows 797 customers remain without power in the Willmore City area of Long Beach after problems with overhead power lines cut off power to the area. The outage began with 130 customers affected Friday evening.

This is the third major power outage in Long Beach in a little over a month (1, 2). After the second outage, state and local officials announced a townhall meeting would be held at Cesar Chavez Park on Saturday, August 22 from 10:30AM to 12:30PM. Long Beach Mayor Robert Garcia, State Senator Ricardo Lara, and Assemblymembers Patrick O’Donnell and Anthony Rendon as well as Southern California Edison and Public Utilities Commission (PUC) officials will be on hand to answer questions and respond to concerns from the community. 

Sen. Lara had previously called for an independent investigation into the outages after the first outage left downtown Long Beach businesses and residents without power for over 72 hours. An official PUC investigation is currently underway.

City News Service contributed to this report.