San francisco goes dark in power outage

A San Francisco power outage that stranded people in elevators and left tens of thousands of others in the dark was caused by the massive failure of a circuit breaker that sparked a fire at a power substation, a utility company spokesman said. Pacific Gas & Electric posted online just after 5 pm that power was restored to all the customers in the Financial District and other areas of the city on Friday. Spokesman Barry Anderson said the equipment failed before a planned repair.

The Fire Department tweeted that it had responded to more than 100 calls for service, including 20 stuck elevators with people inside. At hospitals, surgeries were disrupted briefly but no problems were reported because backup generators kicked in, Mayor Ed Lee said.

“The best news of all was no injuries were associated with this incident,” Fire Chief Joanne Hayes-White said. No traffic collisions were reported, either, and officials thanked motorists for driving so cautiously during the blackout. In fact, people in the city of 850,000 people were generally courteous to each another. The city's iconic cable cars were taken out of service as a precaution since streetlights were not operating on large parts of their routes.