The entire Idyllwild and Pine Cove area, as well as parts of Mountain Center, were without electricity starting just after noon on Wednesday, May 13, with over 800 customers in Idyllwild waiting until after midnight for service to resume.

David Eisenhauer, media information officer with Southern California Edison, provided these details about the outages.

There were two separate outages. The first began at 12:09 p.m., affecting 4,300 customers in Idyllwild, Pine Cove and Mountain Center. SCE crews de-energized the circuit providing power to the area in order to repair a broken pole discovered on Apela Drive, the main road through the Idyllwild Arts Academy. The cause of the broken pole is still under investigation. Most customers were restored by 9:45 p.m.

The second outage started at 9:38 p.m., affecting 830 customers in Idyllwild, and power was restored at 12:31 a.m. Thursday. SCE is still looking into the cause of this outage.

SCE has previously explained to the Town Crier that while urban customers are served by a “grid” of crossing distribution lines, allowing power to reach a neighborhood by several routes, we are served by a “hub and spoke” system, where a single line brings power up the mountain, and work on any spoke shuts off power to all customers on that spoke.

SCE provides warnings of upcoming outages, when possible, and estimates of the time that service will resume to those who have signed up for address-specific notifications at https://www.sce.com/customer-service-center/help-center/outages/general/sign-up-for-outage-alerts. If you are not a customer (a renter whose landlord receives the bill) use https://www.scepsps.com/.