It flickered on and off a few times, and then finally – around 4:30 p.m. – the power went out…leaving businesses on the east side of Larchmont Blvd.,north of Beverly, and nearby residents, in the dark for several hours. According to the LADWP website, about 735 customers were affected by the power outage. Several outages are still showing on their map this morning, but thankfully the Larchmont power was restored a few hours later.
According resident Darren Eminian, a transformer blew at 544 N Lucerne Blvd at 4:10 pm Monday, causing the widespread outage.
Darren posted on Nextdoor:
“I was able to call 911 immediately as the electrical pole was on fire a little bit. They came within 5 minutes and then got DWP out here. By 6:45 pm they had done a fast repair job to multiple parts of the poles & wires.You know with all the things we complain about in our city I am very proud at how efficiently our resources were put into action and worked so well to get power restored. If you had seen the explosions (3 of them) that I saw I thought this job was going to take many hours if not longer. Also got lucky it stopped raining while they were repairing. I’m proud to be a citizen of LA!”
Thanks to Eminian, who told the Buzz he was glad he was home at the right time when the transformer failed, the neighborhood’s power was restored quickly.
“After the LAFD came by I later saw the DWP truck driving around on Rosewood and chased him down on foot to let him know where to go for the problem,” said Eminian. ” I watched the DWP crew the entire time after explaining what happened. I came away from this experience really impressed with their ability to diagnose what needed fixing which was multiple things and then how efficiently they did the work. I am sure they will have many more calls tonight and that is in the rain on top of it. My hats off to them and the city for what they do.”
The power outage came just as Dr. Arthur Kezian was performing a root canal on a patient at his Larchmont Blvd office. Fortunately, Kezian was prepared and finished the root canal manually.
“We couldn’t use any electrical high speed drills,” Kezian told the Buzz. “Luckily we are prepared for this and we were able to place medication seal the tooth and the patient was very happy and everything worked out okay.” Dr. Kezian said his patient didn’t seem to mind stopping mid-way through the procedure and will be back today to finish it up.
