San Francisco Outage Affects 130,000 Customers

A widespread power outage struck San Francisco on Saturday, leaving approximately 130,000 homes and businesses without electricity and disrupting transportation and daily life across much of the city. Pacific Gas and Electric Co., the utility serving the area, confirmed the blackout affected about one-third of its customers in San Francisco, with the initial failures beginning in the morning and expanding through the early afternoon.

The outage originated in western and central neighborhoods, starting around 9:40 a.m. with smaller disruptions in areas like the Inner Sunset and Forest Hill that impacted more than 14,000 customers. By 10:10 a.m., a second wave hit the Presidio, Richmond District, and parts of Market Street, affecting over 24,000 more. The failures soon spread to the Sunset, Golden Gate Park, the Panhandle, West of Twin Peaks, the Western Addition, and sections of downtown, plunging large swaths of the northern and western city into darkness. Officials could not immediately pinpoint the root cause of the early outages, though at least part of the problem stemmed from a fire that erupted inside a PGE substation at 8th and Mission streets around 2:15 p.m.