Out of power

Deepa Bharath

An outage on Wednesday afternoon affected about 1,700 customers, crippling several businesses and leaving residents without power for

several hours, officials said.

The cause for the outage that hit the area at about 12:20 p.m. was

not identified as of late Wednesday afternoon, said Marlon Walker, a

spokesman for Southern California Edison.

“Our people are looking at some underground equipment,” he said.

“But we don’t know for sure why it happened.”

No traffic incidents were reported in the city as a result of the

outage, Newport Beach Police Sgt. Steve Shulman said.

“Only one or two of our intersections were affected, and our

officers are out directing traffic at those intersections,” he said.

Shulman said several residents in Promontory Point were without

power as well.

Power was back up by about 5 p.m. to all but 30 customers, Walker

said. The outage happened in the area bordered by Via Lido in the

north, 17th Street in the south, Monrovia Avenue in the east and

Marine Avenue in the west, he said.

Several Mariner’s Mile restaurants lost lunchtime customers

because of the blackout, said Katie Richardson, a manager at Rusty

Pelican restaurant.

“We do have emergency lighting and battery operated lights for the

kitchen,” she said. “But we couldn’t serve hot food because our

stoves weren’t working.”

All they served for lunch were cocktails and salads, Richardson

said.

“It would have been a good lunch if not for the outage,” she added

with a laugh.

Preston Minor, who runs Sterling BMW across the street from the

restaurant, said he had to drive out of the area to eat lunch. The

car dealership also lost power for almost an hour, he said.

“Our computer systems were down and everything in our business is

on the computer,” he said. “So, we were affected.”

* DEEPA BHARATH covers public safety and courts. She may be

reached at (949) 574-4226 or by e-mail at [email protected].