Outage Closes Courthouse for a Day

A complete power outage at the Torrance courthouse forced closure of the building all day Thursday, after Southern California Edison workers said it would take hours to repair the cable that caused the blackout.

Clocks in the courthouse stopped at 2 a.m., but the power failure was not discovered until court employees began arriving for work at 7:30 a.m. Workers reported that auxiliary power provided some light for the first part of the morning, but eventually even that was lost as crews began working on the problem. Power was restored at 4:05 p.m.

Edison spokesman Ted Porter said a cable inside a flooded underground vault at Madrona and Maple avenues failed, damaging the vault’s fuse cabinet and a connector. It was nearly 10 a.m. before Edison workers could drain the vault enough to see that major components would have to be replaced.

At that point, judges ordered the courthouse closed, telling people with Thursday court dates to return today.

“We told them to just shut it down for the day rather than have all these people standing around waiting,” Porter said.