Thousands Still Without Electricity In Long Beach In Third Day Of Power Outage

Thousands of Long Beach residents are still without power for a third day, after an underground fire sent manhole covers flying earlier this week.

Roughly six thousand Southern California Edison customers around downtown Long Beach have been experiencing short and long term power outages since Wednesday afternoon. Crews restored power to most of the customers, only to create additional outages while conducting repair work, according to ABC 7. Shortly after 2 a.m. this morning, crews were trying to test underground power lines at Locust Avenue and 6th Street when smoke began rising from manhole covers.

As of Friday morning nearly 3,200 customers are still without power according to SCE—an increase from 2,700 affected on Thursday. Traffic around the area has also been significantly affected with congestion reported throughout surface streets and northbound lanes of the 710 freeway closed at the Third Street onramp, and southbound off ramps closed at Broadway and Sixth Street.

The city of Long Beach and employees from SCE have been providing water, ice and flashlights to residents affected by the outages. The utility company has not provided an estimate as to when the repairs will be completed. But in the meantime, customers are airing their grievances with the company and sharing images of the outages on social media.

On the bright side, powerless customers can still charge their phones and go to the Aquarium of the Pacific: