Southern California Edison (SCE) said a four-hour power outage on the Santa Monica Pier Sunday afternoon was caused by “bad cabling.” No injuries were reported due to the outage, despite concerns over rides at Pacific Park.
The electrical issues cut power to 8,410 customers in far western Santa Monica — everyone west of 3rd Street between Colorado Avenue and Marine Street.
The outage began at 12:06 p.m. and lasted about four-and-a-half hours, with power restored by 4:39 p.m.
Shortly after the outage began, the Santa Monica Fire Department (SMFD) received emergency calls requesting urban search and rescue assistance to the Pacific Park Ferris Wheel, but the issue was already resolved by the time first responders arrived, according to SMFD Captain Walter R. Patton.
“Our dispatch center (Fire Com) dispatched a USAR assignment to the pier for a report of people stuck on the Ferris Wheel,” Patton described in an email to the Daily Press. “However, upon arrival of FD resources, it was determined that all people had exited the Ferris Wheel with assistance from Pacific Park employees. There were no injuries reported.”
SCE Media Relations Adviser Gabriela Ornelas said the cause of the outage was “bad cabling — but our crews were able to replace that cable and restore power.”
The outage came two weeks after another SCE outage cut power to an estimated 20,000 customers across Santa Monica on Tuesday, July 19. That outage lasted nearly four hours, from 6-9:42 a.m.
The cause for the July 19 outage was still undetermined as of Monday, Aug. 1.
“We don’t have a determined cause; it’s actually unknown,” Ornelas said Monday afternoon. “That does happen sometimes. An outage can happen for a lot of different reasons.”
She added that she did not know when more information would be available, but that it was a “substation interruption,” which accounts for the high number of customers affected.
emily@smdp.com
