Blackout in San Francisco: 130,000 consumers without power, city partially shuts down

In San Francisco, on Saturday, December 20, a large-scale power outage was recorded, affecting about 130,000 customers.

It was by reported by Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), the main supplier of electricity and gas in northern California.

PG&E said that emergency services quickly began to eliminate the consequences of the incident, the network was stabilized, and no new outages are currently expected for consumers.

Later, the power company informed about the gradual resumption of electricity supply. As of 9 p.m. Saturday local time (7 a.m. Sunday Kyiv time), about 90,000 customers had electricity again. The company estimates that about 40,000 more customers should be connected in the near future. Emergency crews continue to work at night, and further restoration depends on the results of safety checks.

According to The New York Times, the power outage has had a significant impact on the city. Shops, cafes, and restaurants were closed, unmanned taxis stopped operating, and some public transportation stations were closed. The San Francisco Ballet canceled its performance of The Nutcracker.

The cause of the accident was not immediately clear. According to San Francisco Fire Department spokesman Mariano Elias, one of the factors was a fire at a PG&E substation. At the same time, a map of blackouts shows that in some parts of the city, electricity was lost even before the fire broke out on Saturday afternoon. A sharp increase in the number of de-energized customers - by tens of thousands - occurred around the same time as the fire.

As a reminder, in Odesa, residents of houses that had been without electricity for a long time staged protests with traffic blocking. The Odesa Regional Military Administration called on the citizens to refrain from radical actions and remain calm.