LOCAL : Part of La Habra Blacked Out
A construction crew working at the La Habra Fashion Square damaged a power line this morning, causing a 45-minute blackout that affected a local hospital and an unknown number of stores and homes in a half-mile-square area of the city.
Emergency generators at the Friendly Hills Medical Center on Lambert Road were automatically activated after the 9:15 a.m. power failure. No patients were in danger, hospital officials said.
La Habra police spokeswoman Cindy Knapp said the blackout also knocked out traffic signals at four major intersections, and police directed traffic until power returned about 10 a.m.
The power failure was limited to an area bounded by Beach Boulevard on the west, Lambert Road on the north, Idaho Street on the east and Imperial Highway on the south, Knapp said.
Police think a heavy-equipment operator at the Fashion Square mall, which is being renovated, inadvertently cut a power line, Knapp said.
Edison spokesman Bob Goodlow could not confirm the cause of the outage, saying only that investigators for the utility company were at the scene gathering information.
An operator at the local Bullocks, the only store still operating at the shopping center, said that the store did not lose power and was opened without any delays.
Start your day right
Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
