Power returns to most of San Francisco after widespread outage

SAN FRANCISCO – Power was restored for tens of thousands of electricity customers in San Francisco late on Dec 20, after an hours-long outage
affecting nearly a third of the city left many neighbourhoods in darkness by nightfall.

About 40,000 of the city’s 414,000 customers were without power as at about 9.30pm (1.30pm in Singapore), down from about 124,000 earlier in the evening on Dec 20, according to the site PowerOutage.com.

When night fell, the outage was affecting many neighbourhoods in the northern half of the city, including the Richmond and Sunset districts, and stretching through Haight Ashbury into downtown.

Much of the west side near Golden Gate Park and north towards the Presidio were dark. So was City Hall’s dome. Pedestrians used their phone flashlights to cross streets as some restaurants served meals by candlelight.

The outage forced stores and mass-transit stations to close and led Waymo to temporarily suspend its driverless taxi services. The San Francisco Ballet cancelled a performance of The Nutcracker.

Firefighters were putting out a fire at a Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) substation, a five-storey building with no windows in the middle of the city, and the San Francisco Fire Department was urging residents to avoid the area at Eighth and Mission streets. The fire was called in at 2pm, according to Lieutenant Mariano Elías, a fire department spokesman.

Power had been out in parts of the city before that point, but the outage seemed to have expanded by tens of thousands of customers around the same time. Lt Elías said the fire was a “contributing factor” but could not say whether it was the sole cause.

PG&E said in a statement on the social platform X that it was working with emergency crews and city officials to resolve the outage, but it provided no further details and did not immediately respond to questions. It said that it had stabilised the grid and was not expecting additional outages.

Some residents received notifications that indicated it could be hours until their power was restored.

The outage proved frustrating to people attending gatherings and shopping on the last weekend before the Christmas holiday. Stores and restaurants were also struggling to conduct transactions without their electronic payment systems in the tech-driven city.

Mobile phone service was initially intact, but some towers went dark, and data speeds were slower than usual, when available, because residents no longer had Wi-Fi. Many of the businesses, restaurants, bars and grocery stores on Divisadero Street near Alamo Square closed until their power was restored.

The Bay Area Rapid Transit system closed its Powell Street and Civic Center stations in downtown San Francisco because of the power outage. The city’s Muni light-rail system also had to curtail service because the outage impacted the computer system controlling its trains.

‘No power, no business’

Traffic seemed to flow for the most part, even as drivers navigated without stop lights.

But there were mixed indications of how well Waymo’s driverless taxis were functioning at such intersections, with social media users reporting that some were stuck and clogging roads. A spokeswoman for Waymo, Ms Suzanne Philion, said late on Dec 20 that Waymo temporarily suspended its services because of the power outage.

Some drivers looking to escape the city were stuck at a petrol station, waiting to pump petrol after the power went out at 2.30pm Pacific time (6.30am in Singapore). The pumps rely on electricity.

“No power, no business,” said Mr Kevin Lee, a petrol station attendant.

At one neighbourhood watering hole, Fool’s Errand, the power outage attracted a crowd looking for something to do. The business was taking cash payments and beer and wine were flowing.

Some customers who sat down before the power went out were unable to pay, but a surprising number of them still carried cash, said Ms Denise Yuki, 37, who runs the bar with her fiance.

“We got these lights from our neighbour,” she said, pointing to battery-operated lamps that had been placed on tables.

She added that some neighbours had been so grateful the bar was still open that they began trying to acquire candles for the business.

How does one do that in this tech capital?

DoorDash, she said. NYTIMES