Update: Nearly 500 San Francisco PG&E customers likely without power until Saturday morning
SAN FRANCISCO -- Hundreds of PG&E customers in San Francisco are expected to be without power until Saturday after an underground equipment failure caused an outage affecting thousands Wednesday night, a utility spokesperson said.
San Francisco residents woke up in the dark Thursday morning after the massive outage knocked out power to homes and businesses in the Nob Hill, North Beach, Chinatown and Tenderloin neighborhoods.
The outage was reported at about 9:15 p.m. Wednesday involving underground equipment in the area of Clay and Montgomery streets in the city's Financial District, and initially impacted 9,454 customers, PG&E spokesperson Mayra Tostado said.
Pacific Gas & Electric said crews worked overnight to restore power to those neighborhoods and could have power restored by noon.
While not disclosing the cause of the outage, the San Francisco fire department said its crews responded to an underground vault fire at 640 Clay Street at 8:42 p.m.
According to social media postings, the outage began around 9:15 p.m. as the Golden State Warriors were wrapping up their 123-116 Game 5 playoff win over the Sacramento Kings.
As the sun rose early Thursday morning, the city's iconic Coit Tower towered over the blacked out homes. San Francisco police were warning early morning commuters to be prepared for traffic lights that were not working at key intersections.
As of 6 a.m. Thursday, nearly 3,000 of the customers had their power restored and more got power back over the course of the day. However, 495 are still without power in the area of the damaged equipment, and the estimated restoration time for them is not until 10 a.m. Saturday, Tostado said.
"We know how disruptive it is to be without power and have brought in additional crews and resources to bolster restoration efforts," she said. "We apologize for the inconvenience and will continue to provide restoration updates to our customers until power is fully restored."
The outage triggered plenty of social media chatter.
"Power is still out! @PGE4Me what's going on. Thursday at 5AM - 9 hours without power," Louisa Pickering posted on Twitter.
"Black outs are so weird. Power went out in huge chunks around several of #SanFrancisco's NE districts. Including in my apartment. The quiet is what's creepy. The city is never this quiet," John-Phillip posted on Twitter.
"Power is out in Nob Hill, San Francisco. Saw on citizen that there is a fire underneath the streets downtown on Clay. We've noticed blinking lights and power surges for the last few days, wonder if this is related," rae posted.
The cause of the outage remains under investigation.
