Power went out around the San Francisco Ferry Building and parts of the surrounding waterfront Wednesday morning, cutting electricity to roughly 455 customers and disrupting businesses right as the morning commute got underway. The unplanned outage began at 6:42 a.m., and crews spent the following hours trying to pin down what caused it.
Pacific Gas and Electric Co. estimated that power would be restored by 12:15 p.m., though the company said the cause remained under investigation, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. PG&E spokesperson Tamar Sarkissian said the utility was addressing an outage near the Ferry Building and working to restore power safely and quickly. Inside the 1898 landmark, lights went dark and security gates rolled down at some businesses, while Blue Bottle, Parachute and Red Bay Coffee were all knocked offline during what should have been their busiest morning hours.
Waterfront Businesses Left Scrambling
The Ferry Building itself houses restaurants, cafes, shops and a major waterfront transit hub, and it sits at the center of a Port of San Francisco waterfront that draws roughly 24 million visitors a year, according to the Port of San Francisco, which notes the historic hall hosts nearly 50 artisan merchants and restaurants. The outage also put perishable inventory among the practical concerns for nearby food businesses. Nearby, the Embarcadero YMCA, which contains a gymnasium and an indoor pool, was also within the outage footprint.
Beyond the Ferry Building corridor, the only other active PG&E outage reported in the city as of 9 a.m. was a minor disruption affecting roughly 60 customers in Diamond Heights, according to SFGATE, which indicated outage maps showed no other major citywide failures happening at the same time.
Dark Signals Along a Busy Commuter Corridor
The outage also disabled some traffic signals and pedestrian crossing signs along the waterfront just as commuters were heading into downtown. Under California Vehicle Code Section 21800, drivers approaching an intersection with inoperative signals must stop and proceed according to the statute’s right-of-way rules, including its rule for vehicles arriving simultaneously, per FindLaw.
PG&E crews inspected the electrical system at the outage site and repaired damaged sections, though the utility said it had not identified what caused the loss of power as of Wednesday. The cause remained under investigation, per the same Chronicle account.
PG&E Outages Draw Scrutiny
A far larger failure occurred on December 20, 2025, when a fire at PG&E's Mission Substation cut power to 120,000 residents. An independent investigation by engineering firm Exponent, completed in May 2026, found that high humidity caused condensation buildup that resulted in the fire, while an insulating board PG&E workers had flagged as damaged the previous November but never replaced was also partially responsible, the San Francisco Standard reported.
That track record has fueled a broader political push at City Hall. On September 22, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors unanimously affirmed an environmental impact report for the city's proposed $2.5 billion acquisition of PG&E's local electric distribution grid, a step toward establishing public power under the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission. Private commercial buildings like the Ferry Building remain connected to PG&E's grid, the agency has said. The SFPUC advises residents and businesses that PG&E still owns and operates most of the city's electrical grid, and directs customers to report unplanned outages through 311 or PG&E's own outage tracking system.
