The Region - News from June 9, 1987

Nearly 600,000 electric customers suffered blackouts at one time or another due to weekend storms. A spokesman for Southern California Edison said 552,000 customers--about 12.5% of the total served by the company in its six-county area of Southern California--were blacked out by lightning strikes that knocked out nearly 800 major transformers and did an estimated $2.5 million in damage to equipment. A spokeswoman for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power said that more than 30,000 customers had power failures, with 150 transformers destroyed. There was no immediate dollar estimate of damage to Department of Water and Power property.