Rain Brings Power Outages, Fender-Benders

Washing San Diego with its first significant rain since June, a storm Monday night also knocked out electricity in about a dozen neighborhoods and at one television station, threw a cable TV system’s offerings off-line, and drove drivers into dozens of fender-benders.

No serious injuries were reported in connection with the storm, though it did deluge police with reports of traffic accidents. There were so many reports that, by 9 p.m., about two hours after the rain began, the California Highway Patrol stopped counting minor accidents and sent squad cars only to more serious crashes, a dispatcher said.

From Oceanside to Imperial Beach, power lines were reported down around San Diego County, a San Diego Gas & Electric Co. spokesman said. Power was knocked out to about 12,000 homes and businesses in scattered parts of San Diego, La Jolla, Chula Vista, Imperial Beach, Oceanside, La Mesa, Lakeside and San Marcos, the spokesman said.

The storm, which produced 0.30 of an inch of rain in its first couple of hours over San Diego, was expected to pass through the county today, leaving partly cloudy skies, forecasters said.

Suffering from below-average rainfall for the second straight year--a drought that in some parts of the state is in its fourth year--San Diego is due in “the next four weeks for some good rains, hopefully,” National Weather Service forecaster Harvey Hastrup said. “We need it.”

Drivers showed Monday night that they were unfamiliar with rain.

In the early evening, the CHP logged three separate accidents on northbound California 163 from downtown to the intersection of Interstate 8, three more on I-5 from downtown to the junction of I-8, two on I-5 in Chula Vista, a couple of more on I-805--and that was just at the beginning of the night, a dispatcher said.

“Just numerous,” she said. “Too numerous to count.”

The first reports of what turned out to be about a dozen major power outages came in about 7:30 p.m., SDG&E; spokesman John Pruyn said.

One of the largest, in San Diego’s Golden Hill neighborhood, turned out the lights for 3,500 customers, Pruyn said. It was repaired after a couple of hours, he said.

Most of the outages were due to blown transformers, Pruyn said.

“That seems to be a lot of the problem, transformer connections blowing out,” he said. “They’ve accumulated a lot of dirt over the summer, and, when the rain starts and they get wet, you get sparking and arcing.”

Television station KNSD (Channel 39) in Kearny Mesa lost power about 7:45 p.m. The station operated on backup generators and transmitted from live minicam trucks, officials said.

“We have cable all over the place,” said Mick Torres, director of the evening newscasts. “Everybody’s running in different directions. But, actually, it’s pretty well-organized. It looks better than the last time” the station lost power.

Cox Cable customers in downtown San Diego and Hillcrest lost reception about 7:40 p.m., said Sandy Murphy, a company spokeswoman.