La Cañada officials give Edison static over outages

La Cañada city officials expressed displeasure Tuesday with Southern California Edison’s service and response in the wake of recent outages that included an hours-long blackout on Christmas night and another on Friday that wiped out traffic lights on Angeles Crest Highway.

Speaking in a comment section at Tuesday night’s council meeting, Councilman Mike Davitt conveyed frustration with the utility’s excessive response times and repeat outages. He asked city staff to consider the possibility of filing a complaint with the California Public Utilities Commission to seek resolution on the matter.

“I think Edison needs to be better prepared,” Davitt said. “I know we have a good working relationship with them, and they’re relatively responsive. But the rate of our power outages, it’s too high.”

City Manager Mark Alexander said the Los Angeles County Fire Department confirmed Friday’s outage, which left about 800 customers without power for hours, was due to a squirrel that caused a minor explosion.

“I do agree that we’ve seen more than our fair share of outages,” Alexander said, adding he has not yet received a full accounting from SCE of the occurrences and their aftermath. “I think they are making the effort. The questions remain on the timing of those efforts and the extent of those efforts.”

The council agreed to wait for a response from Edison to Alexander’s inquiries and discuss possible options at a later date.

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Sara Cardine, sara.cardine@latimes.com

Twitter: @SaraCardine