Storm Starts Fires, Briefly Blacks Out Santa Clarita

Lightning strikes from a summer electrical storm east of Los Angeles briefly knocked out power to the Santa Clarita Valley Sunday and ignited several brush fires, including one that consumed 100 acres in the desert.

About 45,000 customers in Saugus, Valencia, Castaic and parts of Newhall, and in San Fernando in the San Fernando Valley, lost power at 5:59 p.m., said Rosalie Gnam, area manager for Southern California Edison. Power was restored to most homes within 10 minutes, she said, although electricity to about 6,000 customers still had not been restored by late evening.

The failure of a circuit breaker at Edison’s Saugus substation caused the six other substations on Edison’s 66,000-volt Saugus system to shut down, Gnam said. Investigators believe the cause of the failure was a lightning strike, she said.

Lightning strikes also touched off about a dozen brush fires throughout the Antelope and Santa Clarita valleys Sunday evening, sheriff’s deputies said.

The largest of the fires, a 100-acre blaze at 200 Street West and Lancaster Road, erupted at 5:48 p.m. The fire was 50% contained by 8:15 p.m., and firefighters expected to have all the flames out by midnight Sunday, said Bo Ament, a Los Angeles County firefighter.

Ament said firefighters would remain on the scene throughout the early morning today to extinguish smoldering embers from the fire.

Another fire erupted about the same time in the 8800 block of Soledad Canyon Road, Ament said. That blaze, which consumed five acres of brush, was extinguished by about 7 p.m., he said. The fire was particularly difficult to fight because it was burning on steep terrain, Ament said.

The other brush fires were all fewer than five acres in size. None of the fires threatened structures, and no injuries were reported as a result of the blazes, Ament said.

The power outage knocked out traffic lights throughout the Santa Clarita area. Local merchants said they saw several near-collisions at intersections, but police reported no accidents.

Area hospitals reported that their emergency generators kicked on when regular power went off and that as a result they operated as normal throughout the blackout.

While not threatening any lives, the outage was inconvenient for area merchants. Phil Scaletta, part owner of Double Deal Pizza Co. in Saugus, said his shop lost power for about 15 minutes during the Sunday dinner hour. He said about a dozen pizzas were in the electric oven when the power stopped, and that the pizzas came out half-baked.

“We did have a couple of large combos,” Scaletta said. “It’s a shame to lose those.”

Scaletta, who does all his business in takeouts and deliveries, said he telephoned customers whose pizzas were lost to break the news that their dinners would be delayed. “Most of the people were very understanding,” he said.

The upside of the power outage, Scaletta said, was that several Saugus residents whose home-cooked dinners were ruined called Double Deal to place last-minute orders. “Those poor folks couldn’t cook either,” he said with a chuckle.

The power outage also caused problems for ice cream stores. Patrick Leddy, owner of the Baskin-Robbins store in Saugus, rushed to cover his containers when his freezers shut down.

Luckily, Leddy said, a man waiting in line had a gas-powered electric generator in his car. The man brought the generator into the shop, and Leddy plugged in his cash register.

“I made him a custom sundae for being so nice and helpful,” Leddy said. The man’s choice? A banana split.