17,000 Customers, Hospital Experience Power Outage Following Lightning Strikes
RIVERSIDE (CBSLA.com) — A large power outage took place early Saturday, affecting over 21,000 customers, after thunderstorms caused lightning strikes in Riverside.
The Kaiser Permanente Riverside Medical Center was among the structures to experience parts of the outage after three sub-transmission lines went out suddenly at 2:30 a.m.
Lightning appeared to have struck the Harvey-Lynn substation, which is located in the La Sierra Avenue area, sparking a fire, according to Riverside Public Utilities.
The transmission lines were repaired by city crews and power was restored to the hospital nearly two hours after the initial outage took place.
By 6:30 a.m., power was restored to about 17,000 ratepayers, with the remaining customers having their own power back on by 8 a.m., according to the utility.
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