‘Miserable’ without electricity

Outages continue in parts of Orange and L.A. counties. At least 63,100 homes are affected.

Things looked dark Tuesday for Raymond Fitzgerald. And he was powerless to do anything about it.

“I’ve called the Department of Water and Power and they say they’re doing everything they can. But you’d think after three days they’d have the electricity fixed,” said the Los Angeles resident as he checked the ice level in the picnic coolers on his backyard patio.
“I feel like I’m in a Third World country. My wife is doing dishes in a pail. I can’t get the electric gate open to get my car out. We can’t even light too many candles at night because it just adds to the heat in the house.”

The Fitzgeralds were among at least 63,100 Southern California utility customers without power Tuesday as overworked electrical transformers fell victim to the heat wave.

The electricity conked out about 3 p.m. Sunday along Fitzgerald’s side of the 600 block of Keniston Avenue in Mid-City. On Monday, the 53-year-old accountant and his wife, Keri; daughter, Maggie, 9; and son, Grady, 12, tried to cool off at a movie, but the air-conditioned theater was sold out. So that night they invited 10 friends over for a blackout party to eat all of the frozen steak and seafood that had thawed out.

The outages didn’t stop at the county line. Thousands of Orange County residents also were without power Tuesday as the region’s heat wave rolled into its seventh day.

Los Angeles Times