Power Fully Restored in Downtown Santa Barbara Following 14-Hour Edison Outage
Outage Affecting 6,150 Customers Was Due to Damaged Underground Power Lines
This article was underwritten in part by the Mickey Flacks Journalism Fund for Social Justice, a proud, innovative supporter of local news. To make a contribution go to sbcan.org/journalism_fund.
Power was completely restored by 10:45 p.m. on August 26, after a widespread power outage put 6,150 Santa Barbarans in the dark. The blackout began at 8:44 a.m. that day after one of Southern California Edison’s underground power lines was damaged.
State, Figueroa, Canon Perdido, and Santa Barbara Streets went dark, hitting a slew of downtown businesses and county buildings. The Superior Court of Santa Barbara was forced to delay its Monday operations, writing on its website that “countywide computer systems are down” as a result.
Luckily, the power was partially restored around 9:30 a.m., and as of 4:45 p.m. the same day, only 24 customers remained affected by the outage, said Diane Castro, a spokesperson for Southern California Edison.
The outage came after “workers inadvertently dug into our equipment and damaged an underground power line,” added Castro. It is unclear at this time whether the workers were employed by Edison or not.
For information on future outages, see Southern California Edison’s Outage Tracker.
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