San Francisco: After a significant interruption, most residents now have power again

San Francisco: The majority of the 130,000 homes and businesses in San Francisco that had been affected by a significant outage that day earlier created significant disruptions in the city were able to regain power on Sunday.

As of Sunday at noon, Pacific Gas and Electric Co. reported that around 17,000 customers were still without electricity. Following Saturday’s outage, PG&E had said that its personnel were working to restore power in a number of neighborhoods and small sections of downtown San Francisco.

In a statement, PG&E said that it anticipates power restoration for the remaining customers by Monday at 2:00 p.m.

Regarding the substation located at 8th and Mission streets, the company said, “The damage from the fire in our substation was significant and extensive, and the repairs and safe restoration will be complex.” Some of the outages have been attributed to the fire. Investigations about the outage are still ongoing.

In order to assist with restoration operations, PG&E reportedly dispatched more engineers and electricians.

“To ensure safe work actions, this extremely complex work plan will require the highest level of safety focus,” PG&E said. There have been no reports of injuries.

A sizable portion of the city’s northern region was left without power due to the outage, which started just after 1 p.m. on Saturday and grew in size. Approximately one-third of the city’s power company’s customers were affected by the outage at its height.

PG&E said on X at about 4 p.m. on Saturday that the system had stabilized and that no further disruptions were anticipated.

One of the biggest shopping days of the year, Saturday, saw widespread restaurant and store closures, dimmed street lights, and Christmas decorations, according to social media postings and local media.

Residents were advised to avoid unnecessary travel and to regard down traffic signals as four-way stops by the San Francisco Department of Emergency Management, which said on X that there were “significant transit disruptions” occurring around the city.

The company that operates autonomous ride-hailing cars, Waymo, halted operations. A Waymo car seemed to be halted in the midst of an intersection in at least one social media video.