Residents Of Stanton Senior Complex Suffer Through Hours-Long Power Outage

STANTON (CBSLA.com) — Hundreds of people, many of them residents of a senior living complex, remained without power late Tuesday night, several hours after an outage in their Stanton neighborhood.

Southern California Edison crews were on the scene, in the 7600 block of Katella Avenue, after officials say an underground cable problem caused the outage around 11:40 a.m.

Ambulances pulled up to assist some of the residents living inside the Park Place Apartments, where auxiliary power lit up the hallways as the sun went down.

Judith Argyle, one of more than 300 seniors in the dark, said she relies on her nebulizer to breathe. But with no power, she had been without it for hours and was relying on her son to pick her up.

"They wouldn't have the power on until midnight. I wouldn't make it 'til midnight. I'd have to call 911 because I can't breathe," Argyle said.

Down the hall, Gloria Nicholson said she feels like a prisoner, bound to a wheelchair on the third floor. With the elevators out, she couldn't make it down the stairs.

"We're stuck. When the power goes out we're stuck. They have no auxiliary power for any of the apartments," Nicholson said.

CBS2/KCAL9's Andrea Fujii tried knocking on the apartment manager's door but no one answered. Residents Fujii spoke with said the manager had not come to check in on them.

Fujii also called the emergency maintenance number for the building. An official said he would connect her to the manager but CBS2/KCAL9 had not received a call back as of 10 p.m.