Ongoing Heat Wave Leaves Thousands Of LADWP Customers Without Power
LOS ANGELES (CBSLA) — More than 12,000 Los Angeles Department of Water and Power customers lost electricity Tuesday night due to the extreme heat and increased demand on the utility's system.
As of 11 a.m. Wednesday, power had been restored to all but about 6,000 customers. The neighborhoods most affected were Studio City, Koreatown, Van Nuys and Valley Village.
About half of LADWP customers who lost power in the West Hills area had their power restored by Wednesday afternoon. Officials initially predicted power would be restored in West Hills by 10 p.m., then 11 p.m., but has since shifted the estimate to 11:30 p.m.
Power in Koreatown, Mission Hills, Westlake, Silver Lake and Echo Park was restored around 9:45 p.m., according to the LADWP.
The outages occurred after the scorching triple-digit temperatures overloaded equipment, the LADWP said.
LADWP has a service area that includes roughly 1.5 million customers.
In a tweet Tuesday night, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said that crews were working to restore power as quickly as possible, though he said it could take up to 12 hours for power to be fully restored.
A Flex Alert urging customers across the state to conserve energy was in effect from 2 p.m. through 9 p.m. Wednesday.
The California Independent System Operator — which oversees roughly 80% of the state's power grid through Southern California Edison, Pacific Gas and Electric Company and San Diego Gas & Electric – said the state avoided rolling blackouts Monday and again on Tuesday due to conservation efforts from customers.
LADWP is not expected to be impacted by rolling blackouts this week since the utility is locally-owned and runs its own plants.
Power has been out for more than 12 hours in this West Hills neighborhood. A woman just told me her kids slept on lounge chairs in the backyard last night! @CBSLA pic.twitter.com/gJijoSwQeM
— Tina Patel (@tina_patel) August 19, 2020
According to LADWP's website, outages were reported in the following communities as of 10 p.m.:
- Glassell Park
- Manchester Square
- Broadway-Manchester
- Fairfax
- Florence
- Mission Hills
- El Sereno
- West Hills
- Cypress Park
- South Park
- Van Nuys
- Larchmont
- Central-Alameda
- West Hills
- Granada Hills
- Shadow Hills
- Leimert Park
- Beverly Grove
- North Hollywood
- Woodland Hills
- Westlake
- Pico-Union
- University Park
- East Hollywood
- Green Meadows
- Granada Hills
- Woodland Hills
- Lincoln Heights
- East Hollywood
- Echo Park
- Woodland Hills
- Boyle Heights
- Hollywood
- Koreatown
- Panorama City
- Westlake
- Broadway-Manchester
- Hollywood
- Hyde Park
- Silver Lake
- Florence
- Northridge
- Echo Park
- Sun Valley
- West Hills
- Green Meadows
Customers still experiencing outages in the areas that the LADWP has reported restored service are asked to reset their circuit breakers and if they are still out of power, report it at http://ladwp.com/outages or call 1-800-342-5397 (1-800-DIAL-DWP).
Note: An earlier version of this story said there were 9,000 reported outages impacting 1.5 million customers. LADWP has since clarified that there were 9,000 customers impacted by the reported outages out of the 1.5 million it services.