Power Outage Plunges Shoppers Into Darkness

Hundreds of Christmas shoppers were plunged into darkness Tuesday evening when a power outage hit the Westside Pavilion and about 1,500 homes.

The outage was triggered when two high-voltage power lines fell in the Palms area about 5:30 p.m., said Mindy Berman, a spokeswoman for Department of Water and Power. Berman said she did not know the cause.

About 1,000 customers in Palms remained without electricity by 9 p.m., Berman said. Power to the Pavilion was restored about 7 p.m., said manager Troy Jordan. But by then most had left the shopping center.

“It was chaos,” said Norma Burns of Santa Monica, who spent 30 minutes trying to leave the building. “It was total blackness. . . . We went to the stairways, where people were pushing and shoving. It was a nightmare, a horrible experience.”