Power outage in San Francisco affects thousands of PG&E customers

An unexpected power outage in San Francisco affected almost 9,000 customers Saturday morning, according to PG&E.

The number of customers who lost power unexpectedly was 8,422, with 238 without power due to planned maintenance, the utility company's outage map states. Those without power were located in the Presidio, Richmond, Sea Cliff, Golden Gate Park and Panhandle districts.

San Francisco fire crews were called to Anza Street for reports of high-voltage wires arcing, a spokesperson said, but they were not sure if it was the cause of the power outage. 

The power outage was reported just before 10 a.m., according to PG&E's outage map. In a statement, PG&E said, "This morning, around 9:45 am, during a routine operational procedure between two San Francisco substations, protective device on the system activated and there was an outage."

The utility company said 120,000 customers recieved a power outage notification but there were never that many people without power. 

"Due to the fact that two circuits were impacted, the outage notification system rolled up to a larger protective device, which indicated 120,000 customers were without power. That was not correct," PG&E said. 

Around 12:15 p.m., the number of customers without power was about 2,500.