Thousands lose power, trees and poles down as high winds sweep across SoCal

LOS ANGELES (FOX 11 / CNS) - The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power was working to restore electricity to more than 21,000 customers today after winds with gusts up to 35 mph raked the area.

More than 3,000 customers were without electricity in the Exposition Park area and about 2,200 had no power in the Vermont Square neighborhood as of 12:45 a.m., according to the DWP.

An outage was also affecting a little more than 1,800 customers in El Sereno and a little more than 1,000 in Rancho Park, according to the DWP.

Lesser outages were reported elsewhere in the city. DWP asked customers to be patient as crews worked "around the clock'' to restore power taken out by those major winds.

Southern California Edison was reporting more than 1,800 customers without power in East Los Angeles and a little more than 1,100 customers without power in Compton. Power was expected to be restored to those areas by Friday morning, according to Edison.

Winds with gusts up to 60 mph were blamed for felling several trees and branches that took down power lines Thursday, according to broadcast reports.

A tree branch fell onto power lines in Van Nuys and sparks could be seen flying from wires in East Los Angeles.

In downtown Los Angeles, gusts took down a traffic light pole, snapping it at its base, at the southwest corner of Main and First streets.

In Inglewood, a fallen tree damaged two cars but missed power lines.

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