"Around 21,000 customers were without power in North Santa Clara County after a Pacific Gas and Electric substation in Saratoga caught fire and belched black smoke into the air on Christmas Eve. PG&E learned about the emergency at its facility at 12975 Glen Brae Dr. at 8:25am, which it said was responsible for cutting power to 16,500 of those customers. The rest were likely storm-related, the company noted."
""We responded to reports of a fire," said PG&E spokesperson Stephanie Magallon, adding the blaze went out by itself while crews were on site-adding the company was successful in getting electricity working again many affected residents quickly. "We've been able to restore the majority of those customers." She said, by around 11:30am, just 2,000 of these customers remained without power. PG&E later said it was able to get power restored for the rest by noon."
"Bill Sullivan is one of the Saratoga residents who lost power. "Maybe the transformer got overloaded," he speculated. "It's traditional." At the time he was sitting at home looking at the PG&E outage map on his phone, curious about another electricity failure in the area. "Then, I heard the boom and the power went out," he said. "When you live near a substation like this, you get used to it." He opted to travel by bike to a neighboring city to run an errand."
A Saratoga PG&E substation caught fire on Christmas Eve, sending black smoke into the air and leaving around 21,000 customers in North Santa Clara County without power. PG&E identified the facility at 12975 Glen Brae Dr. and said a failure there cut power to about 16,500 customers, while the remainder were likely storm-related. The blaze reportedly went out on its own while crews were on site. Crews restored electricity for the majority by midmorning, with about 2,000 still without power around 11:30am and PG&E reporting broader restoration by noon. The cause was attributed to an equipment failure and remains under investigation.
Read at San Jose Inside
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