Power restored to most in San Francisco after massive outage

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Power was restored Sunday morning to the bulk of the 130,000 homes and businesses in San Francisco impacted by a massive outage on Saturday that caused major disruptions in the city.

Pacific Gas and Electric Co.'s outage map showed more than 20,000 customers still remained without electricity as of 5 a.m. PST, while crews worked to fully restore service.

The outage, which occurred shortly after 1 p.m. on Saturday, left a large swath of the northern part of the city without power that began to grow in size. At its peak, the outage represented roughly one-third of the utility company’s customers in the city.

Social media posts and local media reported mass closures of restaurants and shops and darkened street lights and Christmas decorations on Saturday, one of the busiest shopping days of the year.

The San Francisco Department of Emergency Management said on X there were “significant transit disruptions” happening citywide and urged residents to avoid nonessential travel and treat down traffic signals as four-way stops. Waymo, the operator of driverless ride-hailing vehicles, suspended its services. At least one video posted on social media appeared to show a Waymo vehicle stopped in the middle of an intersection.

Some of the blackouts were caused by a fire that broke out inside a PG&E substation at 8th and Mission streets, fire officials posted on X at about 3:15 p.m. The full cause remained under investigation.

At about 4 p.m.., PG&E posted on X that it had stabilized the grid and no further outages were expected.