Fire at Utility Substation Plunges Third of San Francisco Into Darkness During Holiday Weekend

ERBIL (Kurdistan24) — A significant electrical infrastructure failure struck San Francisco on Saturday, severing power to nearly one-third of the city’s customers and disrupting commerce and daily life during the critical final weekend before the Christmas holiday. The blackout, which originated in the morning and progressively expanded to encompass a vast swath of the municipality, has been linked to a fire at a key utility substation.

According to reporting by The New York Times, the outage affected at least 124,000 of the city's 414,000 customers by Saturday afternoon.

Data tracking websites such as PowerOutage.com corroborated these figures, while Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), the primary utility provider for the region, offered a slightly higher estimate, stating that approximately 130,000 accounts had been impacted.

Despite the discrepancy in the precise figures, the scale of the disruption was evident, with outage maps showing a massive block of the city designated in red, indicating a total loss of electrical service.

The blackout affected a geographically diverse and economically vital portion of San Francisco.

The loss of power was concentrated in the northern half of the city, stretching from the residential districts of Richmond and Sunset, moving through the historic Haight Ashbury neighborhood, and extending all the way into the city’s downtown commercial core.

The failure of the grid in these areas effectively paralyzed operations for thousands of residents and businesses on one of the busiest shopping days of the year.

The New York Times reported that the catalyst for the outage was a fire at a PG&E substation located in the middle of the city.

The San Francisco Fire Department confirmed via social media on Saturday afternoon that emergency crews were on the scene actively working to extinguish the blaze. Fire officials issued a public advisory urging residents to avoid the area surrounding the substation to allow firefighters to manage the incident safely.

In a statement released on the social media platform X, PG&E acknowledged the severity of the situation and confirmed that it was coordinating closely with emergency responders and city officials to resolve the outage.

The utility company stated that while the immediate crisis was ongoing, they had successfully "stabilized the grid" and did not anticipate the blackout spreading to additional neighborhoods at that time.

However, the company did not provide specific details regarding the cause of the fire or a precise timeline for when full service would be restored, nor did it immediately respond to requests for further comment.

The timing of the infrastructural failure proved particularly problematic for the city's economy and its residents.

Occurring on the last Saturday before Christmas, the blackout halted holiday preparations for tens of thousands of people. The outage proved especially frustrating for retailers and dining establishments in a city known for its reliance on technology. 

The New York Times noted that stores and restaurants struggled to conduct basic transactions, as the lack of electricity rendered electronic payment systems in the tech-driven city inoperable.

As the situation developed from the morning into the late afternoon, residents in the affected zones received notifications from the utility provider warning that power restoration could take several hours.

For a significant portion of San Francisco's population, the holiday weekend began in darkness, with emergency crews working against the clock to repair the damaged substation and bring the city back online.