All it took was one spark to plunge San Francisco into darkness.
The San Francisco skyline went black after a fire at a single local substation that had been the site of two previous blazes.
The outage left over 130,000 homes without power and self-driving cars stranded in the streets of America’s tech capital as the San Francisco Department of Emergency Management encouraged residents to avoid non-essential travel amid the chaos.
“The damage from the fire in our substation was extensive and the repairs and safe restoration will be complex,” said a PG&E spokesperson in a statement on X.
Rail lines and traffic signals were shut down by the outage, with city officials urging residents not to travel for the remainder of the night.
City buses had their routes changed, bypassing certain stops that were affected by the outages.
“Significant transit disruptions” were reported by the San Francisco Department of Emergency Management across the city.
The Pacific Gas and Electric Co. substation in the Mission neighborhood has a troubled history, with NBC reporting previous fires in 1996 and 2003 that resulted in sanctions for the utilities provider.
After the 2003 fire, the utility company was ordered to spend $6.5 million on improvements to the three-story building.
The outage began at 1 p.m. on Saturday, and hit roughly one-third of PG&E’s customers at its peak, according to the Associated Press.
Power was restored to approximately 90,000 customers just after 10 p.m. local time, Mayor Daniel Lurie announced on X, but more than 29,000 people were still without power as of early Sunday morning, according to PowerOutageUS.
By Sunday afternoon, 17,000 residents were still without power, according to social media posts by PG&E.
When traffic lights across the city went out, self-driving cars owned by tech company Waymo were left helpless in intersections as videos of the resulting traffic jams flooded social media.
“We have temporarily suspended our ride-hailing services given the broad power outage in San Francisco,” a Waymo spokesperson told SF Gate.
“We are focused on keeping our riders safe and ensuring emergency personnel have the clear access they need to do their work.”
The blackout largely impacted the northwest part of San Francisco including the Richmond, Sunset, Presidio and Golden Gate Park neighborhoods, officials said Saturday.
The outages began as early as 9:40 a.m. Pacific Gas and Electric Co. was aware of the outages and said crews were working to restore power.
Frustrated customers railed against the hours-long blackouts, calling out the progressive policies that appear to take priority over infrastructure improvements.
“Sitting here in the dark for hours with zero cellular service (I’m in my car) but at least SF has a reparations fund now!” one person wrote on X.
“We’ve been without power for 12+ hours, but it finally came on at 12:30 AM Sunday morning. It’s grossily unacceptable not to have reliable power in San Francisco. PG&E needs to strengthen SF’s power grid and make it reduntant to prevent blackouts,” another wrote.
“This is a disgrace. Most expensive electric rates in the USA and we can’t get the grid fixed,” another said.
“Ten fricking hours and still no power,” fumed a fourth.
PG&E says the grid has been stabilized, and the company is not expecting any more customers to be affected.
Mikella Schuettler
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