Ventura : 4,457 Customers Lose Electricity

The failure of a transformer caused 4,457 customers in east Ventura to lose electrical power for more than 20 minutes Thursday afternoon, a Southern California Edison official said.

The failure hit an area north and south of the Ventura Freeway--running along Valentine Road to the south, west to Saratoga Avenue and east to Montgomery Avenue, said Tom Bradley, Edison’s planning manager.

Electrical power failed at 1:54 p.m. and was restored to most customers at 2:16 p.m. Power was restored to the rest of the area at 2:45 p.m., except for the Ventura Professional Center at 5700 Ralston St., where power was expected to be restored about 7 p.m.

Joyce Bach, a receptionist for optometrist Warren H. Giss, sat in the semi-darkness of the second-floor office waiting for patients. “We couldn’t do eye exams, but we could do visual training,” she said. “We caught up on a lot of paperwork.”

Traffic lights were also knocked out by the power failure. The Ventura Police Department reported that its computers were out of operation for half an hour, but that there was no disruption for dispatchers.