Thousands Without Power After LA Pummeled By Strong Winds
LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) – Up to 24,000 Southland customers were without power overnight Thursday after strong winds caused poles and power lines to topple.
Thousands of people woke up still without power Friday morning. The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power reported about 13,000 customers without power as of 6:30 a.m. Power had been restored to most customers by Friday afternoon.
At its height, more than 3,000 in the Exposition Park area and about 2,200 in the Vermont Square neighborhood were without power, according to the DWP. An outage also affected more than 1,800 customers in El Sereno and slightly over 1,000 in Rancho Park, DWP said.
Lesser outages were reported elsewhere in the city. DWP asked customers to be patient as crews worked "around the clock" to restore power taken out by those major winds.
A 70-to-80 foot tree came crashing down overnight at Wyandotte Street and Orion Avenue in Van Nuys overnight, crushing a car and cracking a power pole in the process. No one was injured. Power was knocked out to the area. Crews were out Friday morning to remove the tree and repair the damage.
Just after 2 a.m., gusty winds whipped up a fire that started in a garage and spread to several nearby buildings and palm trees in Exposition Park. There were no injuries.
In Downtown Los Angeles, gusts took down a traffic light pole, snapping it at its base, at the southwest corner of Main and First streets.
In the 1000 block of Oakwood Avenue in Venice, arcing power lines crackled and lit up the night sky as the winds tossed around a palm tree that damaged the lines.
A large tree also came crashing down on the road at the intersection of Huntington Drive and Fremont Ave in South Pasadena. No one was hurt.
Palm fronds, tree branches and trash were in the streets throughout Los Angeles County.
Southern California Edison was reporting more than 1,800 customers without power in East Los Angeles and a little more than 1,100 customers without power in Compton. Power was expected to be restored to those areas this morning,
The National Weather Service said the high winds wracking Southern California this week are the result of weak frontal systems passing north of the region.
Gusty north winds may persist in some areas of the Southland through Friday evening, possibly giving way to moderate northeast winds Saturday, according to an NWS statement.
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