Power outage affects traffic signals, thousands of homes

A blown cable caused the loss of power to thousands of Costa Mesa households Wednesday afternoon, according to Southern California Edison.

Electricity cut out for 3,577 customers at 1:53 p.m., according to Edison spokeswoman Susan Cox.

The failure caused a small blast at an electrical vault near Adams Avenue and Royal Palm Drive, according to the Costa Mesa Fire Department.

“When we got there it looked like one of the electrical vault covers had blown off, and it was smoking,” said Battalion Chief Bill Kershaw.

Some traffic signals also lost power. Kershaw noted outages along Adams between Placentia Avenue and Harbor Boulevard and on Harbor south until at least Wilson Street.

“The biggest impact is obviously the traffic,” he said.

By about 4 p.m., crews had managed to restore power to all but 463 customers, according to Cox.

She said it was difficult to define boundaries of the outages because they were spread throughout three areas in Costa Mesa.

— Jeremiah Dobruck

Twitter: @jeremiahdobruck