Explosions Rock Downtown, Knock Out Power to Much of City; No Major Injuries Reported

By Jorge Casuso and Teresa Rochester

Two pre-dawn explosions at two Southern California Edison underground vaults in downtown Santa Monica knocked out power across much of the city, blew out the windows at Norm's Restaurant, popped man hole covers and shut down streets around the scene. Two people were treated by paramedics at the scene for glass cuts and released.

The explosions knocked out power to 15,000 customers, or approximately one-third of the city, said Mark Olson, government affairs liaison for Southern California Edison. By 1:30 p.m. there were still 2,000 customers without power.

The power to the remaining customers was not expected to be restored until Friday afternoon, at the earliest. It may take even longer for customers in the immediate area.

"We have to make repairs before we can start reconnecting to the other customers," said Olson. "This is a pretty significant problem. It doesn't happen that often at all."

Weather is being blamed for the explosions.

The first explosion occurred at 4:30 a.m. at an underground transformer located at the middle of Sixth Street and Colorado Avenue, Olson said. Moisture got into the spot where the underground and above-ground power lines meet, causing a meltdown which affected adjacent circuits, Olson said.

The explosion triggered a chain reaction and was followed by a massive underground blast at 5:05 a.m. on the 800 block of Colorado Avenue just east of Lincoln. The larger explosion blew off an approximately 2,000 pound man hole cover, moving it six feet, as well as several steel man hole covers for several blocks in each direction.

The second blast -- which burned for an hour and a half -- also shattered all the windows at Norm's restaurant, 1601 Lincoln Boulevard, as well as the windows of a car parked on Colorado, and shut down traffic lights as far north as the city border. Firefighters sprayed the flames with foam.

Traffic lights were still out in the late morning, and police expected most signals on Colorado Avenue to be down until Friday morning. While lights were still out at the Lincoln and Colorado intersection, the street was reopened around noon as a four-way stop.

"There was fire coming out of man holes, blue flames going out of transformers, and police and fire," said Michael Tarbet, who was at the Santa Monicans for Renters' Rights campaign office across the street. "We heard the rumbles, we got a little nervous, then the lights went out and we evacuated. It was big, I'll tell you that."

Edison pulled in fifty workers from across the County to get the system up and running. The crews may have to do some excavation to fix the damaged circuits, Olson said.

The blasts came less than 36 hours after Edison officials criticized the City at Tuesday's night's City Council meeting for making it difficult to move forward with major upgrades. Some council members were critical of the power company's assessment.

"The number and extent of outages is beyond what Santa Monica can bear," Councilman Paul Rosenstein, a professional electrician long critical of Edison's performance in Santa Monica, said at the meeting. "It's quite an inconvenience in a community that goes above and beyond what other communities bear."

The explosion drew a horde of media to the busy intersection at Lincoln Boulevard, with five helicopters hovering overhead in the early morning hours.