The California utility company behind a substation fire that plunged more than 100,000 San Francisco homes and businesses into darkness for days during Christmas weekend last year has offered its most detailed report on the incident to date.
The outage, which occurred shortly after 1 p.m. on Dec. 20, left a large swath of the northern part of the city without power. At its peak, the outage affected roughly one-third of Pacific Gas & Electric customers in the city, about 130,000 residents.
San Francisco Fire Lt. Mariano Elias said during the outage that it was at least partially caused by a fire that broke out inside a PG&E substation in the Mission district, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. Employees reported smoke inside the four-story building as fire crews extinguished the flames on the first floor, Elias said…