PG&E outages in S.F. leave 130,000 without electricity, no timeline for return of power

A massive power failure darkened entire neighborhoods of San Francisco Saturday in a series of widespread blackouts that, by mid-afternoon, impacted nearly 130,000 homes and businesses – representing about one-third of all city customers served by Pacific Gas and Electric Co.

Traffic stalled as street lights went dark or into emergency blinking mode. Restaurant workers put out candles for diners. BART trains bypassed Powell and Civic Center stations where there was no electricity. Holiday decorations went dark from doorsteps to windows.

The outages began in the morning on the West Side of the city, but then, block-by-block, more San Franciscans began losing electricity. At least a portion of the blackouts that began in the afternoon were triggered by a fire inside a PG&E power substation, but the reasons for the other blackouts remained unexplained for most of the day.

PG&E representatives didn’t respond to multiple requests for information about the series of blackouts throughout the afternoon. The company’s first public response to the outages was posted to social media platform X at 4 p.m.: “We are working with first responders and city officials on an outage in #SanFrancisco affecting 130,000 customers. We will share more information as it becomes available.” It remained unclear what prompted the initial blackouts in the Inner Sunset, Richmond and other West Side neighborhoods.

Some San Francisco residents reported receiving automated phone calls from PG&E saying there was no estimated time that power would be restored but the company “will continue to provide updates on the estimated time of restoration as crews assess the damage and make repairs.”

“It sucks,” said Samantha Lado, who works at Foghorn Taproom in the Inner Richmond. The blackouts left the bar’s televisions dark and the beer warm – so they wouldn’t draw a crowd of patrons to watch two football games, as they’d expected.

By mid-afternoon, San Francisco had opened its emergency operations center to coordinate the city’s response. Mayor Daniel Lurie posted a video from inside the center urging people “to be safe out on the roads.”

“A lot of the lights are out,” Lurie said. “Stay safe and we will continue to be in touch with PG&E.”

San Francisco Fire Lt. Mariano Elias said that a fire broke out inside a PG&E substation at 8th and Mission streets at about 2:15 p.m., which caused at least some of the blackouts. PG&E employees called 911 at 2:16 p.m. to report smoke inside the building. Firefighters were using specialized carbon monoxide equipment to extinguish the flames on the first floor of the four-story building, Elias said.

But by then, swaths of the city had already been in the dark.

The first outage, reported around 9:40 a.m., took out power to just over 14,600 residential and commercial customers in the Inner Sunset down to Forest Hill, according to PG&E’s website.

A second outage started around 10:10 a.m., cutting electricity across the Presidio, the Richmond and some sections of Market Street. PG&E’s online outage tracker showed more than 24,800 customers were affected. At 1:40 p.m., the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency announced Muni trains would bypass the Van Ness station due to the outage.

Businesses across the city were forced to close at the height of holiday shopping and socializing –  from Julie’s Pizza in the Lower Haight to Miller & Lux at Chase Center.

As soon as the electricity went out at Bazaar Cafe in the Richmond, owner Josh Johnson said he had to close and ask customers to leave. Without power, he couldn’t run espresso machines and had to keep refrigerators shut to keep the contents – especially milk – as cold as possible. He lamented workers would lose a day of work.

At Black & Gold, a home goods and vintage shop on Valencia Street, an outage on the Saturday before Christmas was “devastating” for business, said the manager Sam, who asked not to use his last name. A similar outage occurred around the same time last year, but it was earlier in the day and allowed him to prepare with flashlights, batteries and electric candles.

“I literally didn’t think it would happen again this year,” Sam said. “This is so shocking to me.”

By 3 p.m., the outages had spread south into the Outer Sunset and out east across the city. One outage stretched from Hayes Valley to part of the Mission, leaving nearly 2,400 customers without power. Another near Alamo Square took out power to another 6,300 customers. Both Muni and BART trains began bypassing Civic Center and Powell as well due to the outage.

As of 2 p.m., the utility estimated power to the Presidio and the Richmond would be restored between 3:30 p.m. and 3:45 p.m. Other outages were estimated to last well into the night. No information was available about the cause of the outages. The San Francisco Department of Emergency management warned the outages could be impacting street lights and reminded drivers to treat all dark traffic signals as four-way stops.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

This article originally published at PG&E outages in S.F. leave 130,000 without electricity, no timeline for return of power.