High Heat, Demand Blamed For DWP Outage To More Than 9,000 Customers In West LA

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com)  —   Authorities said more than 9,500 customers in West LA lost power Saturday due to a cable being damaged by high heat and high demand for energy.

The utility said they expected intermittent outages Saturday evening as workers replaced a major cable.

The original outage at 8:10 p.m. Friday left about 9,900 customers in West Los Angeles without electricity and power was restored to all but about 260 customers at 1:40 p.m. Saturday by re-routing circuits at the affected substation, DWP spokeswoman Carol Tucker said.

Those feeder circuits were overloaded by the increased power demand and thousands lost power again today, Tucker said.

"The electrical equipment in the station was still overheating and additional repairs were needed," she said.

The result is that about 9,500 customers will be subject to intermittent outages while permanent repairs are made safely with full restoration possible by 11 p.m., Tucker said.

"We've got a lot of people working out there."

Other outages were reported by Southern California Edison on its website, including 1,676 customers in Los Angeles County that were without power in areas including Inglewood, Long Beach, Lynwood, Baldwin Park and Lawndale.

SCE also reported 80 customers in Orange County were without power.