Outage leaves 40K Southern California Edison customers in dark on Christmas Eve

LOS ANGELES (KTLA) – Some 40,000 Southern California Edison customers were without power on Christmas Eve after a transformer failed in the Downey-Norwalk area earlier in the afternoon.  

According to SCE’s outage map, the problems began around 1:30 p.m., with Kathleen Dunleavy, a spokesperson for Southern California Edison, telling KTLA that the utility company did not have a timeframe for when power would be restored.  

“Our crews are on scene working to restore power as quickly and as safely as possible. We recognize that this is a tough time to be without power, right before a holiday,” Dunleavy said. “We recognize that this is an incredibly important situation, and we want to get the power back up for our customers.”  

Metro’s C (Green) Line trains were temporarily halted between the Norwalk and Willowbrook/Rose Park stops as a result of the outage, though normal C Line train service resumed right around 5 p.m., Metro officials said in a post to X, formerly Twitter.  

Officials in the City of Downey deployed police to help manage traffic control at intersections where traffic lights were out.  

“We encourage residents to exercise caution when driving through affected areas,” officials said in a statement.  

There were also reports of last-minute Christmas shoppers perusing the darkened aisles of local retailers also affected by the outage.