CALIFORNIA—The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) reportedly had a power outage at an underground utility site that began Sunday, January 24 and as of Wednesday, January 27, half of their customers are reporting on Twitter that their electricity is turned back on.
A spokesperson for the LADWP told The San Francisco News on January 26 that “recent lightning was to blame” for the underground cables being damaged. “Lightning is very damaging to underground cables and connecting joints. It can fry equipment that keeps power flowing,” said the LADWP in a tweet.
The LADWP indicated that they tested one cable and it was working properly, but they needed to make more repairs on another cable before “restoration efforts can begin.”
The company told their customers they would proceed to test and synch the high-voltage stations, “When each station is synched & power restored, we will know for sure if the line is able to carry the customer load. It is possible the line(s) could fail again as customers are restored. Crews are progressing the job carefully and expect to begin restoration in the next couple of hours.”
The LADWP tweeted that they found a damaged “34Kv high-voltage” underground cable and explained that “Both circuits were energized earlier…and crews have been restoring power to customers. As of right now, about 1/2 of the customer locations have been restored.”
According to LADWP’s customer’s tweets, it seems that several apartment buildings were not receiving electricity. In those cases, the LADWP responded that “Power is flowing but our crews are trying to get in contact with some apartment manager so they can turn the power on to remaining buildings…. We must coordinate with building staff for power to be turned back on in buildings. Full restoration will take a couple of more hours as we coordinate with them. If you are still out, thank you for your patience. Both circuits are on and holding steady.”
