VENTURA : Government Center Hit by Power Outage

The Ventura County Government Center and about 2,800 homes in east Ventura were without power Monday morning for about an hour, due to a problem with underground equipment, a spokesman for Southern California Edison said.

The area of the blackout was bounded by Foothill and Telephone roads and Wells and Mills roads.

“We’re still not sure of the cause of the outage, but it appears to be an underground problem in the vicinity of Balboa and Milbrae streets,” Edison spokesman Mike Montoya said. “We have four crews working on the problem.”

Officials in the government center said all the computers were down, but work continued nonetheless because of an abundance of natural light in the buildings. Emergency lights made the otherwise dark courtrooms and restrooms operable.

There were no injuries due to the power outage and no one was caught in an elevator, Montoya said.

While the government center and most residences were without power from 9:30 a.m. to 10:30 a.m., about 120 homes near the source of the outage were without power late into the afternoon.