San Francisco Hall Of Justice Power Outage Disrupts Courts, Jail
SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) - An outage that darkened parts of San Francisco's Hall of Justice for more than two hours Thursday afternoon occurred as a contractor was doing electrical work at the building, a Department of Public Works spokeswoman said.
The contractor was hooking up two new generators when something went wrong and the lights went out, DPW spokeswoman Gloria Chan said.
The Hall of Justice, located at 850 Bryant St., houses police headquarters, the district attorney's office, courtrooms and county jails.
KCBS' Chris Filippi Reports:
Sheriff's Sgt. David Murphy said the outage began around 1:20 p.m.
He said proceedings were suspended at all courtrooms except for five.
County jails 3 and 4 on the sixth and seventh floors were affected by the outage, sheriff's spokeswoman Susan Fahey said. She said inmates' movements were restricted while the power was out.
Police spokesman Officer Albie Esparza said the outage did not affect police patrols. He said the police dispatch center is at another facility on Turk Street and that 911 calls were still being answered.
Chan said generators kicked in to preserve essential public safety services during the outage. The exact cause of the outage remains under investigation.
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