San Francisco officials were working to restore power to the area after roughly a third of Pacific Gas and Electric’s customers were suffering power outages beginning Saturday.
A fire at a Pacific Gas & Electric substation sparked the outage, according to San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie. Then, according to San Francisco Fire Chief Dean Crispen, two more fires broke out. All but one fire was extinguished as of 9:20 p.m. local time on Saturday night. The outage affected 130,000 homes and businesses.
“Civic Center and Powell Street BART stations are reopening, and Muni service is resuming though there are still impacts. Waymo has also paused service,” Lurie wrote on X. “If you’re able, please stay inside and take care of one another.”
PG&E’s latest update reported that power has largely been restored, with roughly 20,000 remaining without power. As a result, some traffic lights were out, and even with police officers directing traffic at some locations, those affected by the power outages are still expected to avoid traveling.
The outages come days before Christmas, when many are anticipated to travel for the holiday. Over the Thanksgiving weekend, San Francisco International Airport hit a new record of 1.8 million travelers passing through.
ENERGY COSTS AND ELECTRICITY PRICES CONTINUE TO SOAR FOR THE YEAR IN SEPTEMBER
As of Sunday morning, the power outages have resulted in seven canceled flights, according to flight tracker Flight Aware.
Affected customers are encouraged to use flashlights instead of candles to avoid fire risk and keep their refrigerators and freezers closed as much as possible.
