Explosion causes outage

A piece of electrical equipment exploded Monday inside an underground vault off MacArthur Boulevard near Birch Street in Newport Beach, knocking out power and forcing emergency workers to evacuate the building, authorities said.

Police said just before 11 a.m. Monday an underground electrical vault at 4590 MacArthur Blvd. exploded, sending smoke into the air and firefighters rushing to the scene.

“It was like a big boom, then the ground started to shake,” said Chimere Kirkwood, an employee at Wells Fargo Home Mortgage who got a clear view of the explosion from her second-story office.

“We saw smoke, then a second boom, then flames and more smoke. We automatically evacuated.”

Southern California Edison officials said an electrical component from the equipment vault, stored under the grass between the six-story Wells Fargo bank building and the sidewalk on Birch Street, failed.

Initially, the blast knocked out power to 80 area customers, Edison officials said. By 5:30 p.m., power had been restored to all the buildings. Wells Fargo employees, however, were without power the longest and went back into work only to get their things and go home for the day.

Firefighters responded to the scene and said no one was injured.

Reporter JOSEPH SERNA may be reached at (714) 966-4619 or at joseph.serna@latimes.com.