Crime & Safety

Power Outage Affects Thousands—Some Twice

Southern California Edison's Rancho Santa Margarita customers lost power in the middle of the night.

Equipment failure was to blame for about 3,400 power outages for Rancho Santa Margarita residents early Wednesday morning.

It was a domino effect that impacted RSM, as nearly 1,800 residents lost power at 2:16 a.m.

Restoring power to some of those residents then caused a second outage that affected nearly 1,500 residents.

Find out what's happening in Rancho Santa Margaritawith free, real-time updates from Patch.

According to Susan Cox, a spokesperson for Southern California Edison, the failure involved the electric cables, which affected 1,780 customers in the Tijeras Creek area.

Partial service was restored at 3:38 a.m., by adding those customers to a second circuit, Cox said; however, that overload caused the second circuit to fail, which affected 1,479 customers from the Arroyo Vista area.

Find out what's happening in Rancho Santa Margaritawith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Essentially, the blackout affected the areas between Arroyo Vista and Antonio Parkway.

Some residents reported two outages, and they would have been the ones added to the second circuit that led to the second outage.

The majority of customers from the first outage had service by 5:30 a.m and everyone had it by 5:40 a.m. The second outage was restored by 5:40 a.m.


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