Thousands of Angelenos go without power amid stay-at-home orders

PICO-ROBERTSON, LOS ANGELES (KABC) -- Thousands of Angelenos found that staying at home during the coronavirus pandemic can be quite challenging when the power goes out for more than 24 hours.

A main underground cable was damaged by recent rains and power was knocked out Friday night to more than 2,100 households and businesses in the Pico-Robertson and Beverlywood neighborhoods.

Residents reported their power had first gone out around 6 p.m. Friday.

It took more than 24 hours before Los Angeles Department of Water and Power crews were able to restore the electricity. Around 7 p.m. Saturday, the department tweeted that the work was done and the power was coming back on.

In addition, before that outage, residents reported several smaller on-and-off outages, including one that lasted about 12 hours.

The outage came as people throughout the country have been asked to stay home to enforce social distancing to contain the coronavirus pandemic. Many households have stocked up their refrigerators and freezers and were worried about food spoiling during the outage. Other residents simply had to fight boredom with no television or Wi-Fi signals and nowhere else to go.

"I'm a little upset right now and frustrated," said resident Bree Long. "We've been down with power for 24 of the last 36 hours here in the Pico Beverly neighborhood. There's thousands of people that are impacted right now, right in the middle of a pandemic when we're trying to obey an order to stay home."

On Saturday, police officers were directing traffic at intersections as crews worked underground in several locations.

"We know this has been a very long day and appreciate your patience," the DWP tweeted to residents.