SANTA MONICA—Roughly 16,000 Santa Monica Southern California Edison customers were impacted by a power outage on Tuesday, July 19, that began around 6 a.m.
Three other outages transpired about 20 minutes later at around 6:52 a.m. The number of affected customers dropped quickly as crews worked to fix the outage. The power was officially restored to some areas at around 9 a.m. Certain areas remained impacted up until noon.
Some businesses in the area were forced to shut down due to the outage. According to reports, SMFD performed an elevator rescue in the midst of the outage. Traffic signals were also affected in several locations.
The cause of the blackout remains unclear and an investigation into the matter is underway. It could take days to determine what was the cause.
SCE spokesperson David Song told Santa Monica Daily Press that there could be any number of explanations for the outage, from a strained grid to equipment failure to an external factor such as a metallic balloon entering a substation.
