A massive weekend power outage plunged much of San Francisco into darkness just days before Christmas, cutting electricity to more than 130,000 homes and businesses and snarling traffic and transit across the city, according to the New York Post. The blackout, which city officials treated as a major emergency, highlighted both the fragility of the local grid and the challenges of keeping a dense, transit-reliant city moving when the lights go out.
The trouble started late Saturday morning, when large sections of the city suddenly lost power and the number of affected customers quickly climbed into the tens of thousands. By mid-afternoon, utility data showed roughly 30% of San Francisco was without electricity, with the tally topping 130,000 customers at the peak. A key incident was a fire inside a Pacific Gas & Electric substation near 8th and Mission Streets, which the San Francisco Fire Department said played a role in the wider outage. Fire crews responded shortly after 2 p.m., brought the blaze under control within a couple of hours, and reported no injuries, but warned that damage at the facility was significant.
The blackout was broad enough to touch nearly a third of the city, but it hit some areas especially hard. Western neighborhoods such as the Richmond and Sunset districts, as well as the Presidio and areas around Golden Gate Park, saw large clusters of customers go dark. Parts of central San Francisco, including Hayes Valley, Alamo Square, and sections of the Mission and downtown, also reported extended outages as the day went on. Because the loss of power followed no simple geographic pattern and changed as repairs progressed, many residents experienced rolling or uneven service—some blocks coming back online while nearby streets remained blacked out.
With traffic lights and streetlights out across wide stretches of the city, officials urged residents to stay off the roads unless absolutely necessary. Drivers who did venture out were told to treat all dark intersections as four-way stops, and police officers were deployed to several key corridors to keep cars and pedestrians moving safely. Public transportation also suffered, as several BART stations, including busy downtown stops, were temporarily closed or restricted, and Muni lines were rerouted, delayed, or halted when tunnels and signals lost power. The outage even affected self-driving vehicles, some of which reportedly stalled or froze in traffic when signals and street infrastructure went offline, adding to gridlock in affected areas.
The citywide outage forced Waymo to suspend its driverless car service, leaving autonomous vehicles stranded in the streets, SF Gate reports. The company halted operations around 8 p.m. because the cars could not operate without traffic signals. Residents shared footage of Waymo vehicles parked in intersections with their hazard lights flashing, causing a significant traffic jam at a busy intersection, according to a post on X. One passenger was left inside a self-driving car during the outage, as footage obtained by the outlet shows.
The timing of the blackout—on one of the final big shopping days before Christmas—made the disruption especially painful for small businesses. Many shops, restaurants, and cafes were forced to close early, operate in near-darkness, or switch to cash-only transactions when payment systems and internet connections failed.
By late Saturday night, PG&E said it had restored power to roughly 100,000 customers, leaving about 30,000 still without service as crews worked through the evening and into Sunday. Officials warned that the extent of damage at the 8th and Mission substation, combined with the complexity of the broader outage, meant some neighborhoods would likely face hours more in the dark. Investigators and utility officials indicated that the substation fire appeared to be a major factor in the blackout, but they also noted that the earliest outages began before the blaze was reported, suggesting that more than one failure may have been involved. As the city recovers, local leaders and residents are pressing for a clearer explanation of what went wrong and what upgrades are needed to prevent a similar city-wide blackout in the future.