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The outages hit more than 140,000 homes and businesses in the San Fernando Valley Saturday, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) confirmed.
"LADWP apologizes for the inconvenience and appreciates customers' patience as we work to restore power as safely and quickly as possible," the department said.
© LA Department of Water & PowerPower outages in Los Angeles
The explosion was reported shortly before 7pm local time Saturday. The LA Times reports that firefighters arrived on the scene to find a huge container of mineral oil, which is used as a cooling agent for electrical equipment, engulfed in flames.
The LADWP said that the power was intentionally cut to allow firefighters to battle the blaze. Firefighters managed to get the blaze under control Saturday night. No injuries have been reported.
LA Fire Department spokesman Brian Humphrey said firefighters rescued dozens of people who were stranded in elevators at the power plant during the incident.
The power cut comes amid a heatwave in the area, with temperatures hitting a sweltering 100 degrees Fahrenheit (37 degrees Celsius) in the Valley.
The power outage sparked a flood of reaction online as people affected sought to entertain themselves on battery-powered devices and share their power-cut hardships.
And nowadays we have this sheer ignorance of the green industry that is pushing solar as a solution, which also pulls funding from upgrades/maintenance of what we already have.
I cant wait until they have all of these hokey BS electric cars on the grid, overload today? Think about then - the electric cars suck up huge amounts of energy. People think it's like a laptop or cellphone, but it uses up huge amounts of electricity to drive which need to be replenished from an already weak grid.