UPDATE 10/2 7:45 am: About 111 residences remain without power Tuesday morning after an outage affected much of Berkeley overnight. PG&E does not yet know when those people will have their power restored.
Power went out to 12,425 people at 9:38 pm on Monday, plunging much of downtown, the north side, and the north Berkeley hills into darkness. PG&E was able to restore power to the majority of customers at 10:22 pm, but by 11 pm the power was out again, said Jana Morris, a PG&E spokeswoman. PG&E got it up briefly, but the system crashed again and at midnight around 8,300 residences were without power. PG&E was able to bring most of the homes back online throughout the night, but a handful still don’t have power, she said. A cable failed at a Berkeley substation causing the outage, she said.
Original story: PG&E officials say about 12,425 people are without power in a large portion of Berkeley stretching from downtown to the Gourmet Ghetto and into the hills.
They are sending a team to investigate what caused the power outage at 9:38 pm. They are estimating power should be restored by 11:30 pm midnight, but that is just a preliminary guess.
Berkeleyside readers reported lack of power on streets including LeRoy and Oxford. According to Chris Thomas on Facebook, the outage caused people to be trapped in an elevator at the Hotel Shattuck on Allston Way in downtown Berkeley.
Update 10:27 pm – People in some parts of North Berkeley and Thousand Oaks neighborhoods and around University and San Pablo Avenue report their power has returned.
10:53 pm: PG&E spokeswoman Jana Morris said that power has been restored to much of Berkeley and only about 627 people are without. PG&E thinks the problem happened at a Berkeley substation, but still has not determined its cause.
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