Over 20,000 Downey homes experienced hours-long power disruptions on Tuesday night, making it difficult for some locals to continue with their Christmas Eve preparations as it was uncertain when the electricity would be restored.
Most of the impacted consumers had their power back by Christmas morning.According to Southern California Edison’s website, there are still isolated disruptions, but by Wednesday night, power should be fully restored.
Outages caused by a transformer failure in the Norwalk/Dowey area affected thousands of SoCal Edison customers; utility officials have stated that the incident is still being investigated. Less than 1,000 families in the remainder of the county were still without power as of 10 p.m. Tuesday, but more over 24,000 SoCal Edison customers in Downey were still without electricity.
However, the SoCal Edison website indicates that only 291 people were experiencing disruptions around half an hour later.
According to SoCal Edison estimates, the broad outages seemed to be mostly repaired by 10:30 p.m., although hundreds more residents in LA County remained without power earlier in the evening.
Over 40,000 households, including over 10,000 outside of Downey, were experiencing outages throughout the county by 8:30 p.m.
SoCal Edison reports that over 20,000 people in Downey experienced power outages that lasted from at least 4 p.m. to 10 p.m. On Christmas Eve, Lillie Reda, whose house was among those without electricity, lighted some candles and cooked a little on the outdoor barbecue. The home went dark while she was finishing up the supper preparations.
“I just got finished making my ham, and then I was like, ‘Oh no, how am I gonna make my mashed potatoes?,'” “Reda said.” “We’ve never had this happen before.”
SoCal Edison had been unable to provide an estimated time of arrival for repair technicians to restore power hours before it was turned back on. Around 6:30 p.m., a SoCal Edison representative stated, “It could come sooner, or it could come later.”
Trains operating between the Norwalk and Willowbrook/Rosa Parks stations on Metro LA’s Green Line were also canceled due to the disruptions, and service was restored by 5 p.m. Some passengers were left rushing to reach their destinations on Christmas Eve as Metro brought in bus shuttles to provide rides to those stuck at the stations.
One of the riders, Jon Wittaker, stated, “It kind of threw me off because it’s a little bit of an imposition for me because I’m excited to go see my grandchildren, and stuff like that.”
Although the reason of the equipment breakdown is still unknown and being investigated, SoCal Edison reports that widespread outages were caused by a transformer failure at a Norwalk substation.
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