As 7th day dawns, still no power for some in Southern California

At first, the darkness was an adventure.

The fireplace was set aglow, the board games came out, and Candy Weber and her family curled up on their crimson couch in the living room, trying to keep warm.

But by the seventh day of the power outage triggered by last week’s windstorm, camp-style living had lost its luster in one San Marino neighborhood, where more than 70 families remained without electricity for heat and other necessities Wednesday morning.

“When you wake up in the morning and it’s so cold you can see your breath,” Weber said, “you don’t want to get up. You don’t want to do anything.”

Her tree-lined block of Bedford Road was divided between the haves and have-nots. Neighbors on one side of the street got their power back Sunday. Neighbors on the other side sat in chilly homes, trying to keep their cool.

They looked to each other for updates. They prodded Southern California Edison over the phone and checked the repair status online. Some drove around the neighborhood, hunting for utility workers to interrogate.

More pressure was put on Edison on Wednesday as the California Public Utilities Commission launched an investigation to find out why the outages happened and why it’s taken so long to restore power.

“SCE has a duty to provide safe and reliable service to its customers, and we have a duty to make sure SCE is doing all it can do to fulfill that mandate,” PUC Executive Director Paul Clanon said in a statement.

As of Wednesday evening, about 1,000 homes served by the utility, mostly in Altadena and Temple City, remained in the dark.

Edison apologized to customers in an ad in The Times. Officials said that crews were working around the clock to restore electricity, but that the sheer number of large trees that had pulled down lines or blocked crews from getting to damaged lines made the task daunting.

Steve Conroy, an Edison spokesman, said nearly 1,000 workers were on the job.

“We had contractors here from San Diego to Bakersfield,” he said. “We had ample resources and plenty of staff. It is just an enormous effort.”

Inside her two-story Craftsman, Weber, 37, sat at her dining room table about noon, more patient than most, coated in layers of knit and cotton. The contents of her refrigerator were sparse and candles, flashlights and lanterns illuminated her dark house.

When she got too cold, she would head to her driveway to hide in her SUV. She would turn on the heater, charge her cellphone and nap. With no hot water, she, her husband and four children, ages 7 to 18, relied on washcloths to keep clean.

Neighbors across the street offered a place to sleep, a chance to bathe, a shelf in the refrigerator. But many residents have been so hopeful power will return any moment, they have been waiting it out.

Sam Cheng, 66, walked around his empty house, covered head to toe in his ski outfit. He kept busy by repairing a fence and a mailbox damaged by the wind. He sent his wife, Shirley, to stay with family in San Diego.

“There was no sense in having her suffer too,” Cheng said.

Around the corner on Huntington Drive, Stacey Plumley took a more active approach. She knew a neighbor a few doors down worked for Edison so she gave him a call.

“I thought maybe he’d have some connections,” Plumley, 42, said.

But like her, the man, his wife and four children were living in the cold. Their nanny struggled to get the youngest child, a 19-month-old, to go to sleep.

Back at her house, tucked behind a grove of trees, Plumley played the role of fire keeper, watching over a wood-burning fireplace, the family’s only source of heat. She and her 11-year-old son, Greyson, began staying in a hotel Sunday night so he could study and rest. But her brother and 80-year-old father roughed it with a bundle of blankets in the living room.

“At this point, it’s not s’mores by the fire anymore,” she said. “It’s more like a catastrophe and you’re just trying your best to survive.”

A few neighbors were lucky enough to be out of town and have missed the whole power outage. Others took refuge with family.

At 85, Virginia Inzalaco was not looking to land on the bravest neighbors list. Soon after the winds swept her electricity away, her daughter came to the rescue and took her to stay in Glendale.

She returned briefly Wednesday to clear out her refrigerator. In a thick pink robe, she moved quickly, warming up her icy hands with her breath.

“It’s like a friend said, ‘I don’t do well being a pioneer woman,’ ” Inzalaco said. “At my daughter’s I have a room, a bed and three meals a day. It’s like I’m on a cruise.”

She surveyed the loss in her kitchen — three trash bags packed with food, plus a counter full of bad cheese, butter and bread.

As she did so, her fridge suddenly began to beep. Then a light went on. Then her kitchen clock began to tick.

“Ahhh!” Inzalaco yelled. “Hallelujah! Will you look at that? It’s back!”

esmeralda.bermudez@latimes.com