Explosions Light Up, Black Out Culver City Area

A series of spectacular transformer explosions lighted the sky “like in a (Steven) Spielberg movie” and left more than 5,800 residents of Culver City without power for at least an hour Saturday night, fire officials said.

The explosions erupted about 9:30 p.m. at electrical transformers located at Overland Avenue and Farragut Drive, disabling traffic signals in a 10-square-block area and causing power surges that stalled elevators and caused other electrical disturbances, said Culver City fire dispatcher Marlene Muslin. The blackout extended along Overland between Culver and Jefferson boulevards, but the cause was not immediately known, she said.

“We’ve had some calls of TVs exploding and microwaves exploding,” Muslin said. “We have people stuck in elevators and, unfortunately, one person had a cardiac arrest.”

That person, a nursing home resident, was hospitalized, but his condition was not determined, she added.

Los Angeles resident Nadya Vantchurin, who was driving along Overland when the blackout occurred, said the explosions in the night sky were “the most spectacular thing I’ve ever seen.”

“The whole sky was lit up,” she said, “and there were sparks that flew sky-high from the horizon.”