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San Francisco power outage leaves 95,000 in the dark

Los Angeles, New York hit with large outages too
Posted at 11:21 AM, Apr 21, 2017
and last updated 2017-04-21 15:18:05-04

SAN FRANCISCO (KGTV) - About 95,000 people were left in the dark Friday following a massive power outage in the San Francisco area.

A fire at a substation in the Nob Hill neighborhood of the city reportedly caused the outage, a spokesman for Pacific Gas and Electric Co. told SFGate.com, but it wasn't clear what caused the fire.

Authorities with San Francisco Fire and Police departments has received calls throughout the morning since the outage rolled through the city at about 9 a.m. PG&E said crews are still working to restore power as soon as they can, though as of 11:45 a.m., power returned to about 10,000 customers.

PG&E estimated power would be restored to most customers by 1 p.m.

The outage stretched from the city's Financial District to the Presidio, forcing closures of businesses, a BART station, a courthouse, and numerous intersections officials said. Traffic across the city came to a standstill during the morning commute.

The BART station has since been reopened.

A number of schools, including Spring Valley Science School, Sutro Elementary, Civic Center Secondary School, Alamo Elementary, Galileo Academy of Science and Technology and Cobb Elementary, were also affected by the outage.

As of 10 a.m., no injuries had been reported, according to SFFD. PG&E did not give a timetable for when power would be restored.

Bay Area residents risked using what battery life they had left to document the incident digitally across the city, including a dangerous situation below of people stuck in an elevator:

 

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San Francisco's outage coincided with other outages experienced in Los Angeles and New York City. Though those outages were not as large as San Francisco's.