Southern California

Power Restored For Remaining SoCal Edison Customers in Orange County

The remaining 11,900 customers who had been without power since Friday night had their service restored as of Sunday morning, Southern California Edison officials said.

But they warned that some may experience momentary outages as they are switched back to their normal source of power, the early morning statement said.

At its peak, the outage affected 28,028 SCE customers, mostly in Irvine and Newport Beach, and shutdown late Friday operations at John Wayne Airport, SCE spokeswoman Lois Pitter Bruce and airport officials said.

Flights at John Wayne resumed Saturday morning, but thousands of other customers remained in the dark until 4:14 a.m. today.

"We know that being without power can be very difficult," spokesman Ron Gales said in today's statement. "We thank our customers for their patience." 

The outage was reported just after 7 p.m. Friday at the airport in an unincorporated area of Orange County surrounded by Irvine, Newport Beach and Costa Mesa, and prompted all inbound commercial flights to be diverted and all outbound flights to be canceled.

The cause was a substation fire that forced the facility to be de-energized, Pitter Bruce said. No injuries were reported.

The Orange County Fire Authority tweeted that the vault fire was near Jamboree Road and Michelson Drive.

Irvine City Councilman Anthony Kuo tweeted that about 100 residents from an apartment building on Palatine were temporarily evacuated due to smoke.

A care and reception center was set up at Northwood High School in Irvine and was available as a cooling center for those who needed shelter, according to the Irvine Police Department. All city of Irvine facilities are designated cooling centers, and residents can go to cityofirvine.org for details on hours and locations.

Copyright CNS - City News Service
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