Thousands of Silver Lake DWP Customers Lost Power After Vault Explosion

Posted 5:01 AM, July 1, 2015, by Ashley Soley-Cerro

LADWP crews were working to restore power to about 9,000 customers in the Silver Lake area on June 30, 2015. (Credit: KTLA)

Power was expected to be restored to more than 8,000 LAWDP customers Wednesday in Silver Lake who remained without power after a vault explosion amid soaring temperatures the previous afternoon.

An explosion in the 600 block of North Hoover Street around 6:27 p.m. Tuesday caused 21,286 customers to lose power, said Jason Stinnett with the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.

By 10:50 p.m., power was restored to 12,286 customers and crews hoped to restore service to the remaining customers by 6:30 a.m. Wednesday.

The majority of those still affected were adjacent to Lyric and Maltman avenues, and Manzanita and Marathon streets, LADWP tweeted shortly before midnight.
It was unknown what caused the explosion.

“These can blow up for any multitude of reasons,” Stinnett told the Los Angeles Times.

The outage came the same day a Flex Alert was issued ,asking Californians to reduce energy during peak hours as temperatures continued to rise. The alert was issued by the California Independent System Operator – a nonprofit corporation that operates the state’s electricity grid.