Rodents Cause Power Outage

A large part of Santa Monica lost power Sunday afternoon after rodents caused a short circuit in electrical switching equipment at a substation off 16th Street, a Southern California Edison spokesman said.

The outage, which affected 17,000 homes and businesses, began at 12:24 p.m. and most power was restored within an hour, said Edison spokesman Paul Klein. He said it is fairly unusual for rodents--presumably rats--to be able to plunge a city into darkness.

“We don’t normally get rodents in the substations,” he said, adding that some of the animals were found dead at the scene.