Power restored after outage forced schools to close

Thousands of customers were without power Tuesday morning when a train contacted overhead power equipment, downing a conductor near West 4th Street and Cabrera Avenue and eleven 12kV circuits out of the Shandin Substation were interrupted.

The electrical disruption affected approximately 18,000 customers in San Bernardino and forced the closure of several schools Tuesday.

The City of San Bernardino provided an update Tuesday afternoon on the outage:

“SCE crews have been inspecting lines and restoring power as they go, and we will have estimated restoration time once we’re able to safely inspect all lines. All power is expected to be restored by late this afternoon.

“We understand any outage is a hardship, especially during the hot weather, and we are working as quickly as we can to restore power safely,” said Jeff Monford, spokesman for Southern California Edison.

San Bernardino City Unified School District announced that the outage had caused the closure of several schools and that parents needed to pick up their children.

“Due to a widespread power outage in North San Bernardino and high temperatures forecast for today, the following schools are closed: Chavez Middle • Salinas • Nutrition Services • Shandin Hills • Kendall Complex • Holcomb • Hillside • North Park • Cajon High • Palm Avenue • Vermont • PDC • North Verdemont • Kimbark • Newmark • Muscoy.

Parents, please arrange to pick up your children as soon as possible this morning.”

Power was restored around noon.