Thousands of Laguna Beach residents lost power twice over the weekend due to failed equipment, impacting over 4,000 Southern California Edison (SCE) customers in the city.
Corey Brindley, 34, a resident of Laguna Beach, said losing power two days in a row was a bit of an awakening for him and his family to be prepared for future emergencies.
“With two small kids, we got creative with arts and crafts and puppet shows,” Brindley told The Epoch Times. “But that shouldn’t downplay how inconvenient it is to lose power for an extended period of time for two days, especially when there weren’t any weather events to place the blame on.”
Taelor Bakewell, a spokesperson for SCE, said power outages occur due to weather, foreign objects, and wildlife, especially within the greater Orange County area.
“It’s a diverse territory,” Bakewell told The Epoch Times on Oct. 25.
David Song, another spokesperson for SCE, said when a power outage happens, customers closest to the equipment failure experience a longer wait time until their power is fully restored.
Like the scene of a car accident on a busy highway, the streets surrounding the incident are rerouted faster than the immediate cross streets, he said.
The same goes for power outages.
“It’s a story of reliability,” Song told The Epoch Times. “Our system is more resilient now than ever before.”
The recent power disruptions marked the third outage within a month in the city.
The first outage initially knocked out power for 4,256 customers on Saturday at 8:30 a.m. until crews restored power three hours later for all but 65 customers. By 8:30 p.m., all customers were re-energized.
Twenty-four hours later, a second outage was reported due to equipment failure at 8:47 p.m., affecting 3,972 customers until 7:13 a.m.
SCE encourages customers to prepare themselves with flashlights, batteries, and any personal equipment residents may need in an outage.
