More than 20,000 in Downey face power outages lasting hours on Christmas Eve

More than 20,000 households in Downey faced power outages that lasted hours Tuesday evening, leaving some residents struggling to carry on with their Christmas Eve plans as it remained unclear when the electricity would come back on. 

Thousands of Southern California Edison customers were hit by the outages tied to a transformer failure in the Norwalk/ Downey area, which utility officials have said remains under investigation. At 10 p.m., over 24,000 SoCal Edison customers in Downey were still facing outages while less than 1,000 households across the rest of the county were still without power.

But just about 30 minutes later, there were just 291 customers facing outages, according to the SoCal Edison website.

While the widespread outages appeared to be mostly resolved by 10:30 p.m., given the SoCal Edison estimates, there were thousands more people across LA County without electricity earlier in the evening. 

Around 8:30 p.m., more than 40,000 were facing outages countywide, including over 10,000 households outside of Downey.

In Downey, power outages affecting more than 20,000 lasted from at least 4 p.m. to 10 p.m., according to estimates from SoCal Edison. Lillie Reda, whose home was one of those without electricity, did some of her Christmas Eve cooking on the barbeque outside and lit up some candles. She was just getting through dinner preparations when the house went dark.

"I just got finished making my ham, and then I was like, 'Oh no, how am I gonna make my mashed potatoes?,'" Reda said. "We've never had this happen before."

Hours before the electricity came back on, SoCal Edison had been unable to offer a time frame for when the power would be restored by crews making repairs. "It could come sooner, or it could come later,'' a SoCal Edison spokesman said around 6:30 p.m.

The outages also led to a cancellation of service along Metro LA's Green Line, for trains running between the Norwalk and Willowbrook/ Rosa Parks stations, before service returned by 5 p.m. Earlier, Metro brought in bus shuttles to offer rides to passengers stranded at the stations, some of whom were left scrambling to get to their destinations on Christmas Eve.

"It's a little bit of an imposition for me because I'm excited to go see my grandchildren, and stuff like that, so it kinda threw me off," said Jon Wittaker, one of the riders.

According to SoCal Edison, a transformer failure at a substation in Norwalk led to the widespread outages, although the cause of the equipment failure remains unknown and under investigation.

The utility has not released any other details on the outages or progress on the repairs.