Power Outage Traps 24 in Mall Elevators

A power outage left two dozen people stranded in elevators for about 10 minutes Friday afternoon at The Oaks mall in Thousand Oaks, according to fire officials.

The 12:35 p.m. outage was caused by an explosion in an underground circuit vault, said Southern California Edison spokeswoman Christina Bradley.

About 720 customers near the mall were affected, with most having their power restored an hour later, Bradley said.

Power came back on for the remaining customers just after 2 p.m.

The Ventura County Fire Department responded to two calls of people trapped in elevators.

One at a bank proved to be a false alarm, said Capt. Tony O’Hagan.

The second call came from The Oaks mall on Hillcrest Drive. Firefighters had to rescue 24 people from two elevators, O’Hagan said.

Shoppers were trapped for about 10 minutes before firefighters arrived, and it took about five minutes per elevator to get them out, O’Hagan said.

Edison reported one other outage in Ventura County on Friday.

The outage was caused by a failed underground cable and occurred about 1 p.m. in Newbury Park, affecting 94 customers.

Power was restored to all but 15 customers by 4:30 p.m.

Power was back to normal for all customers two hours later.