San Francisco outages leaves 130,000 without power

A widespread outage led to power failure in 130,000 homes and businesses in San Francisco on Saturday, as reported by AP citing Pacific Gas and Electric Co.

The power outage left a large swath of north San Francisco in dark, initially beginning with the Richmond and Presidio neighborhoods, further covering areas around Golden Gate Park in the early afternoon and growing in size across the city.

PG&E did not immediately respond to AP's requests for comment on the cause of the blackouts. The Saturday's power outage represents roughly one-third of the utility company's customers in the city.


Several social media posts and local media reported mass closures of shops and restaurants, while some showed darkened street lights and Christmas decorations.

The San Francisco Department of Emergency Management informed on a X post there were “significant transit disruptions” happening citywide and urged residents to avoid nonessential travel and treat down traffic signals as four-way stops.

The city's transportation agencies said they were bypassing some Muni bus and BART train stations because of the power outages.

At least some of the blackouts were caused by a fire that broke out inside a PG&E substation at 8th and Mission streets, fire officials posted on X at about 3:15 pm.

At about 4 pm, PG&E informed citizens through X that it had stabilised the power grid and was not expecting additional customer outages. The power company said it was unable to confirm if power would be restored by later Saturday.

(With inputs from AP)