A power outage caused by a downed tree took out electricity for nearly 1,000 Santa Cruz city customers on Thursday afternoon, according to Pacific Gas and Electric’s outage map.
The outage, first reported at 2:45 p.m., initially showed a little more than 5,000 PG&E customers without power. About 30 minutes after the initial report, that figure was down to 3,759, and by 3:30, it was at 1,197, with an estimated time of restoration of 5:30 p.m.
The remaining affected area was mostly in downtown Santa Cruz, stretching along Front Street to Pacific Avenue and into parts of the Beach Flats neighborhood. PG&E spokesperson Stephanie Magallon told Lookout that a downed palm tree near Leibrandt Avenue in the Beach Flats, near the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, took out power lines.
“After securing the area, crews began switching customers to an alternate power source and isolating the damaged equipment so repairs could be made,” Magallon said, adding that just before 4 p.m., the number of customers without power was down to around 700.
By 6 p.m., the vast majority of customers had power again, with only 47 in the city still without electricity.
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