Power was restored to most Hancock Park residents Sunday evening around 9:30 p.m. In Windsor Square, residents told the Buzz their power came back on around 3:30 a.m. and around the same time, power was also restored to the businesses on the east side of Larchmont Blvd. We also heard residents in St. Andrews Square had their power restored around the same time. As we were posting this story, though, we also heard from a reader on Lillian Way who is still without power. Apparently, residents on the west side of that street had power restored, but not those on the east side.
When we visited Larchmont early this morning, the bakeries and coffee shops were open for business. The manger of Noah’s Bagels told us they lost a lot of product after two days without power. They don’t have all their menu items, but they are glad to be open. The Center for Yoga opened this morning, offering an 8:30 a.m. class. Peet’s Coffee was busy with the usual customers getting their morning coffee. We even saw the city’s parking enforcement officer out giving tickets, a sure sign that Larchmont has returned to business as usual.
The traffic light at Beverly and Larchmont is still out, however, so use caution and be patient at the intersection. The utility pole that was damaged Friday evening has been taken down and was resting curbside when we stopped by this morning.
South of the Village, crews have cut up the fallen Ficus tree that was blocking the street late Friday night. There’s still a good deal of debris at the side of the street, so use caution there too. And, finally, the large cedar tree that fell across 5th Street at Arden Blvd. in Windsor Square, is still there. We saw lots of residents coming by to take photos, we even got a few to pose for us!
Thanks to the efforts of city crews and LADWP for efforts to restore power to the neighborhood. We still have questions about what exactly happened that we hope will be answered in the coming days. In the meantime, life is back to normal for most residents and businesses. Another rain storm is headed our way today, but this one is expected to be much milder.
Thanks to the Buzz for calling attention to all our local power outages! And huge thank you to the hardworking DWP crews. But I look forward to a full accounting from DWP management of what went wrong and how they prioritized the work. Like many, I am suspicious of any agency that self-categorizes a weather event as “similar to a 6.0 earthquake” and then reacts SUPER slowly to fixing the problems, leaving many of us to deal with mounting financial ramifications at our homes. If this is going to continue to be the response we can expect from DWP when we get a big rainstorm or windstorm, then DWP clearly needs a major overhaul, more funding, more crews anticipating the effects. And more power lines moved to underground.