Still No Explanations for Major Malibu Power Failures

Despite repeated efforts to determine why segments of eastern Malibu have been without electrical power since 4:42 a.m. Friday morning, neither Southern California Edison, nor the City of Malibu, are able to explain what happened.
A news release issued by the city on its Web site today stated that a power circuit that starts at Cross Creek and runs along Pacific Coast Highway went out this morning. This was reportedly a planned power interruption from 9 a.m. to approximately 3 p.m., but may or may not be related to the earlier blackout. 
The city’s reverse 911 system sent calls and emails to all residents who are signed up at about 10 a.m. that indicated an outage was in effect from Carbon Canyon west that could last a day, which might mean anything from eight hours to 24 hours. That message assured residents that the water supply in Malibu is not affected.
City Emergency Services Coordinator Brad Davis, who said he initiated the reverse 911 communications, indicated that he had not been forewarned about the planned outage or the earlier east Malibu problem.
Davis added that he did not know whether the eastern outage was related to the undergrounding of utilities that is currently underway along Carbon Beach on Pacific Coast Highway.
No one from SCE, already under local fire on the issue of overloaded power poles increasing wildfire danger in the Malibu area, was responding to requests for more information.
                                                        —Anne Soble