Many Idyllwild residents and visitors were surprised by two power outages this weekend. Both were caused by the same incident, felling a tree in the wrong direction.

Saturday afternoon, April 7, Southern California Edison reported power was out for two hours to more than 2,300 customers in Idyllwild. Then it was out for about three hours again Sunday morning.

The afternoon outage, according to Sally Jeun in the SCE media relations office, was caused when a local customer cut a tree that fell on a power line. It took SCE about two hours to restore the service to Idyllwild. Apparently, that was a temporary fix, enabling customers to could get through the evening. It did not completely repair the problem.

The early Sunday morning outage was necessary to fix and re-configure the equipment, returning it to the normal state. “It was more convenient to take it back down to restore the original configuration,” said Jude Schneider, senior advisor for corporate communications. “It was a two-part fix.”

The boundary of the outage was north of May Valley, east of Idyllmont Road, north of Tahquitz View Drive and south of Forest Haven, according to Jeun. Schneider confirmed that roughly the same area was taken down during the night.

If residents need help pruning or cutting a tree, they should contact SCE at 1-800-990-7788 for assistance before blacking out the town. SCE will offer assistance.

The Saturday outage started about 1:35 p.m. and power was fully restored at 3:30 p.m. The Sunday outage occurred between 12:30 a.m. and 3:30 a.m.