DWP Strike Leaves Some in the Dark : Labor: New customers wait days for power to be turned on. The walkout has left crews understaffed and tripled repair time.

For the vast majority of Angelenos, the strike by city utility workers has meant not much at all. No dimming of the lights. No shorter showers. Just another nightly story on the television news.

Hundreds, however, have felt the pinch. Sara Guyan has felt it since Day 1.

She moved into a duplex in San Pedro on Sept. 1, the morning the strike broke out. She was forced to use candles instead of electricity. She hated coming home, and stayed at her job at a nearby nursing home well after her shift ended. It was only late Thursday, when a Department of Water and Power crew finally showed up, that her life returned to normal.

“I was so excited about moving, but it’s been miserable,” she said. “I’ve called the mayor’s office, my councilman, and I’ve called the DWP several times a day. They were sympathetic but they said there’s nothing they could do.”

Seriously understaffed and concentrating on service breakdowns, the DWP says it has several hundred new customers who have gone for long periods without service.

The widespread blackouts and water shortages that DWP officials feared when the strike began have not materialized, but as the stalemated labor dispute begins its 10th day, more of the utility’s 1.3-million customers are beginning to feel the effects.

On Thursday afternoon, 840 customers lost power in the Van Nuys area in one of a series of relatively small outages that have hit daily. Earlier in the day, a water main broke in West Los Angeles, temporarily affecting service to 20 customers.

Such breakdowns occur regularly even without a strike, but the repair time has been tripled in some cases because of smaller crews, dispatching delays caused by picket lines and the age and physical condition of the supervisors who are filling in for 8,487 striking workers.

“Although very few customers are without service, the number of maintenance problems requiring attention is increasing, and the backlog is becoming more significant with each passing day of the strike,” the DWP said in a prepared statement.

As the longest walkout in the utility’s history lingers, officials say they may have to call on customers to voluntarily conserve electricity. No such request has been made yet, although residential customers who are on life support and sensitive commercial users like hospitals, airports and refineries received letters from the DWP last month urging them to consider putting emergency generators in place in case of a strike.

To make matters worse, the hot weather is putting a strain on the transformers located atop power poles. Officials say three to four consecutive days above 90 degrees could knock some out.

Tap water, which may have had more of a chlorinated odor since the DWP strike began, may now also begin to take on a slightly green color in Hollywood and the San Fernando Valley, DWP officials say. That is caused by an algae buildup in the Hollywood and Los Angeles reservoirs.

Algae typically grows on the water surface when the temperature soars, but usually there are workers monitoring the buildup and using chlorine to control it.

Because of the reduced work force--just 23% of the DWP’s 11,000 employees are crossing picket lines to keep the water and power systems operating--the monitoring of water quality has been more lax. The drinking water remains safe, said Robert L. Simmons, assistant engineer in charge of water operations.