Surprise San Francisco power outage resolved

A power outage that San Francisco on Monday afternoon was resolved shortly after 3 p.m., but some traffic lights in the North Beach-Chinatown area were still blinking in the late afternoon.

Around 4 p.m., lights were blinking yellow at Stockton and Broadway; Stockton and Columbus; and Pacific and Columbus. Traffic toward North Beach was backed up on Broadway. 

The outage had affected Fisherman’s Wharf, North Beach and part of the Financial District. 

Pacific Gas & Electric Co. said the outage started at 1:20 p.m. and impacted just over 3,000 San Francisco homes and businesses at its peak. The cause is under investigation, a spokesperson said.  

The city is still reeling from a prolonged, unexpected PG&E outage several days before Christmas that affected about a third of homes and businesses, following a fire that damaged a substation. There was no information on whether Monday’s outage had any connection to that event.

The Richmond District, which was hard-hit by the December outage, did not appear to be affected on Monday.

During Monday’s outage, Muni advised people to “treat any intersections with dark traffic lights as a four-way stop,” and generally exercise caution. 

San Francisco’s Department of Emergency Management told residents to “only call 9-1-1 for life safety emergencies, avoid non-essential travel, treat down traffic signals as four way stops, keep refrigerator and freezer doors closed, and turn off major appliances to prevent surges.”

A planned power outage affecting more than 15,000 customers occurred a week ago, when PG&E was doing repairs to the fire-damaged substation.

Correction: An earlier version of this article gave an incorrect date for the December power outage. It was Dec. 21.