Rain Causes Outages for Thousands

Power outages, most of them triggered by the season’s first rainfall, affected several thousand homes in Los Angeles County over the weekend.

The problems lasted from a few minutes in some areas to several hours in others, and primarily occurred Saturday night and Sunday morning, said Dorothy Jensen, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.

In Sun Valley, the power lapsed for just over a minute beginning at 11 p.m. Saturday. In Van Nuys, some DWP customers lost power for four hours. Outages also were reported in North Hollywood, Studio City, Sunland, Tujunga, Sylmar and Granada Hills.

In Glendale, the city’s Public Services Department reported that a few thousand residents were without electricity early Sunday morning.

Power Pole Hit

In the Santa Clarita Valley, lightning struck a power pole, causing outages in Valencia and Saugus on Saturday night, said Kevin Kelley, a spokesman for Southern California Edison, which serves the area. Most of the 1,000 customers affected had power restored in a few minutes, although about 100 were without electricity for up to two hours, Kelley said.

Utility officials said all the problems were weather-related. “It didn’t rain hard,” Jensen said, “and that was the problem. This happens with the first moisture of the season.”

During the last several months, dust and dirt had accumulated on the insulators that protect the power lines, Jensen said. A light rain turns the dirt into mud that conducts electricity and short-circuits the system.

Not all the outages were related to the rain, however. Someone firing gunshots at an insulator knocked out power to 700 customers in the Antelope Valley near Acton for up to four hours, Kelley said.