Power Outage Sends Fireworks, Flame Skyward Like in a 'Movie', Says City Manager

• Related: UPDATED: Power Restored Following Blown Transformer in Manhattan Beach (Sept. 19, 2013)

An Edison spokesperson said power was restored to SCE customers at 9:09 p.m., 9:19 p.m., 9:38 p.m., 10:44 p.m., 4:42 a.m. Friday and all by 1 p.m.

The area without power went from Rosecrans Avenue on the north to Isis on the east, 11th Street on the south and Grand View Avenue on the west, said Paul Netter, SCE spokesperson Friday afternoon.

The outage started when an underground vault near Tin Roof Bistro in Manhattan Village blew, causing a live wire to go down on Cedar Avenue near Marine Avenue. Edison is still trying to determine the "real cause" of a "wire down and failed transformer," he said. 

Public safety staff in Manhattan Beach, including fire, police and parking personnel, responded to the scene, shutting down unsafe areas with barricades and positioning police and parking staff to handle traffic in intersections where signals went out, said David Carmany, city manager.

Carmany told Patch the outage "required a full response from every city department." He went to city hall to help handle phone calls from residents.

When the power outage hit, Carmany was standing in a parking lot outside Tin Roof Bistro where the Manhattan Beach Police Department was holding a special Tip-A-Cop event to raise funds for Special Olympics.

"We watched it all," he told Patch. "It was like watching a Mel Gibson movie with fireworks and flame."

Unfortunately, city staff has grown somewhat accustomed to dealing with power outages in the city and quickly put into place "barricades for protection" and moved "uniform personnel" into the streets to direct traffic, "which is never good when it's dark," said Carmany.

"It [a power outage] is so routine that we're in constant reaction mode," he said.

Instinctively dialing 911 at the sight of the fireworks and flames, Carmany realized he was surrounded by police. He then dialed Edison's number.

When he used terms such as "troublemen" and "Grizzly" to the SCE staffer on the line, he said they seemed quite surprised that he knew Edison's terminology and system.

Manhattan Beach, like many other South Bay cities, has had one unplanned power outage after another. One earlier this month was the result of a construction mistake on the site of the new Manhattan Beach Public Library. Others are due to constant equipment issues (see list below).

To combat ongoing unplanned power outages, South Bay Assemblyman Al Muratsuchi introduced Assembly Bill 66, which gives the California Public Utilities Commisson the power to mandate an electrical corporation, such as Southern California Edison, to produce an annual reliability report that provides information on system reliability, including the frequency and duration of interruptions in services. The CPUC would then be expected to use the information to require remediation where repeated deficiencies are identified. (Full story here: Bill Takes Aim at Unplanned Power Outages, Says Muratsuchi.)

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