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Power outage hits Midtown area

Sixty people are still without power after a power outage at 9:20 a.m. this morning in Palo Alto in the Midtown plaza, leaving the surrounding area without electricity.

Shops were unable to deploy their services and houses were left in the dark, according to Debra Katz, Palo Alto utilities communications manager, who added that the initial outage lasted for a little over an hour and a half. The City of Palo Alto’s Utilities website released a statement saying that homes and buildings along Middlefield Road between Charleston and downtown were affected by the outage.

The source of the problem has been narrowed down to the 2900 to 3100 blocks on the Middlefield Road circuit, according to Katz. Louis Road, Seale Avenue, Channing Avenue and Lincoln Avenue were also left without power, Katz said.

According to the City of Palo Alto’s website, power had been returned to all but 60 of its customers as of 12:20 p.m. The remaining few, who are still in the dark, are mostly businesses.

Kathi Bowers of the the Palo Alto High School Math Department was affected this morning by the power outage.

“I had been sick, I was sick all weekend,” she said, “so I stayed home to try and get caught up and get well, then I was trying to come in to teach my class so I was running a little later than usual”. She added, “I got out of the shower and I had no electricity and my hair was dripping wet, so it was kind of a fiasco.”

“We have had a transformer down the road that had blown a couple of times,” Bowers said. “At first I thought it was just my house because there was construction across the street, then I found out it was all my neighbors as well.”

“It was just an inconvenience – it was annoying,” Bowers said.

Updates to come when more information becomes available.

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About the Contributors
Levi Schoeben, Author
Sam Kelley, Author

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    Spencer SchoebenAug 21, 2012 at 11:46 pm

    Great article, Levi (and Sammy).

    Reply