Power Outage Alarms Residents
A power outage darkened the city and neighboring areas for an hour Friday evening, and police said they were swamped with calls from nervous residents.
A breaker failure at the Table Mountain substation near Oroville caused the outage, which affected about 44,000 customers from 5:40 p.m. to 6:45 p.m., said Pacific Gas & Electric Co. spokeswoman Maureen Bogues. It was not immediately clear what caused the failure.
Chico’s 911 center was jammed with calls from people concerned that the city was without power, said Police Lt. John Carrillo.
Chico is a university town of 65,000 about 80 miles north of Sacramento.
Carrillo said additional police were called in to patrol the streets during the outage.
Start your day right
Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
