More than 2,000 San Diego Gas & Electric customers lost power across North County Thursday morning, with outages first popping up around 11 a.m. in pockets of Oceanside and Carlsbad. As of 12:15 p.m., 2,035 customers were still sitting in the dark, waiting for crews to flip the lights back on.
The hardest-hit communities were La Costa, Fire Mountain, San Luis Rey and Ocean Hills, according to FOX 5 San Diego & KUSI News, which reported the outage Thursday. SDG&E told the outlet it expected to have power restored by 4 p.m. Thursday, though officials said the cause of the outage was unknown and remained under investigation.
No Clear Cause Yet For Thursday's Blackout
For now, residents in the affected neighborhoods are left guessing why their power went out, as the cause remains under investigation.
Customers looking to track the situation in real time were pointed to SDG&E's online outage map for updates.
North County Has Seen Bigger Blackouts Before
Thursday's outage is far smaller than a blackout that hit the region earlier this year. In March, about 103,000 SDG&E customers lost power for roughly an hour one Thursday night, according to The San Diego Union-Tribune. That outage stretched from Carlsbad south to Encinitas and east into Escondido, and the California Independent System Operator later attributed it to an increase in north-south flow on a transmission line that triggered an automated safety shutdown.
Separate accounts of that same stretch of outages varied on timing. NBC 7 San Diego reported more than 100,000 customers were without power at the outage's peak, while NBC Los Angeles reported the outages began at 7:41 p.m. and lasted until about 8:56 p.m. The Union-Tribune, meanwhile, reported that power was restored by 8:50 p.m. Neither NBC station's report specified an exact date for the outage it described.
The November outage's cause remains unknown. For residents still waiting on their lights to come back on, SDG&E's outage map remains the best source for updates.
