LA HABRA : Equipment Failure Causes Power Outage

An underground equipment failure Friday at La Habra Fashion Square caused 1,200 customers--including a local hospital--to lose electrical power for almost two hours, police said.

The blackout at 9:15 a.m. created headaches for residents, banks, stores and restaurants in the half-square-mile area bounded by Beach Boulevard on the west, Lambert Road on the north, Idaho Street on the east and Imperial Highway on the south, according to La Habra police spokeswoman Cindy Knapp.

At the Friendly Hills Regional Medical Center on Lambert Road, emergency generators were automatically activated when the hospital lost power. No patients were in danger, and no patient transfers to other hospitals were contemplated, hospital officials said.

“We had no problems,” said Sandy Alderman, assistant director of nursing at Friendly Hills Medical Center. “We were able to handle everything.”

Some hospital employees, however, reported myriad minor inconveniences brought on by the outage. For instance, an automatic glass door to the hospital lobby was stuck halfway-closed, making it difficult for people to enter until employees cranked the door open.

And hospital administrators posted warnings for people not to use the elevators, which were running on emergency power. Electricity was restored to the hospital at 9:50 a.m., Alderman said.