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San Francisco’s famed Ferry Building was plunged into darkness for three hours Wednesday as another huge Pacific Gas & Electric outage rocked the city’s iconic waterfront — the latest in a rolling line of blackouts to infuriate Bay Area residents.
The unplanned outage began at 6:42 a.m. and affected about 455 customers in the area until 9.30am, the utility company said.
The outage affected morning businesses including Blue Bottle and Red Bay Coffee, local outlets reported.
Lights inside the landmark were out, and gates at some businesses were down. Some traffic signals and pedestrian crossing signs nearby also were reportedly not functioning.
The Ferry Building houses restaurants, cafes, shops and a major waterfront transit hub at the center of te Port of San Francisco waterfront that draws about 24 million visitors a year.
The outage hit businesses in during the busy morning hours.
The cause of the outage is still being investigated, according to a PG&E spokesperson.
PG&E crews reportedly inspected the electrical system at the outage site and repaired damaged sections.
There has been multiple PG&E outages recently in the region.
In late July, an unexpected power outage in San Francisco affected almost 9,400 customers.
“This really hurts the older small business. We’re losing so many customers,” restaurant owner Ben Pang said told CBS news.
“Why only Geary Street? Why always this area?”
About two weeks ago, another PG&E power outage near the Oakland Coliseum BART station prompted major train delays, caused by a wire falling over the tracks.
According to the utility’s website, unplanned outages are to be expected from car accidents, wild weather, or by a tree branches hitting powerlines protected by Enhanced Powerline Safety Settings — which is used to prevent wildfires by turning power off automatically if there is a problem.
As of Wednesday afternoon, there were two other power outages still ongoing in the San Francisco area, each affecting 50 to 499 people, according to PG&E’s outage map.
