Trees toppled during winter storms in Hancock Park, causing power outages. The storms also flooded electrical vaults and caused transformer failures. (photo courtesy of Cindy Chvatal Keane)

The outrage over recent power outages in Hancock Park and Windsor Square continued on March 6 during a virtual meeting with Los Angeles Department of Water and Power officials.

Representatives from the Hancock Park and Windsor Square homeowners associations grilled the LADWP over what they called an inadequate and unacceptable response to the power outages, which happened during severe weather during the weekend of Feb. 25-26. Some residents were left without electrical power for 48-72 hours, and many complained about receiving confusing messages about why the power was out and when it would be restored.

In response, the homeowners associations asked the LADWP and Los Angeles City Councilmembers Katy Yaroslavsky, 5th District, and Hugo Soto-Martinez, 13th District, to join a March 6 Zoom meeting to explain why there were so many problems. The Hancock Park Homeowners Association sent a list of questions to the LADWP on March 2 that members wanted the utility to answer. At the end of the meeting, some said they were still dissatisfied.

“It seemed like the DWP was completely unprepared to respond. It was a failure on their part to provide direct answers to the questions,” HPHA president Cindy Chvatal-Keane said. “They seemed to be pretty pat answers. They had the questions for several days. We had close to 200 people on the [Zoom meeting]. We were happy the council members were there, but we thought the DWP was unprepared.”

The LADWP was represented in the forum by Walter Rodriguez, director of power transmission and distribution; Aram Benyamin, chief operating officer; and Brian Wilbur, senior assistant general manager for power system construction, maintenance and operations. Rodriguez answered a majority of the questions, frequently stating that the LADWP is conducting an “after action plan” to assess what went wrong and why, and how to prevent problems from reoccurring in the future.

Rodriguez said the city received an unprecedented amount of rain and wind from “a once in a century storm” on Feb. 25-26 that strained the power grid. In Hancock Park and Windsor Square, the electrical system is among the oldest in the city, and a significant amount of equipment is located in underground vaults. Rain filled some of the vaults with water, leading to outages, Rodriguez said. Repairs took a considerable amount of time because crews had to troubleshoot equipment to determine where and what the problem was, and in some cases, pump water out of vaults before work could start on the electrical equipment. Rodriguez added that numerous trees also toppled onto power lines, which also caused a significant number of outages.

To illustrate the problem, he mentioned a power outage in Windsor Square that occurred during the storm in which 30 customers were without power for more than 48 hours. He said that outage resulted from a transformer that was damaged in a flooded vault.

“On that one, it lasted a couple of days, because we also had other equipment in that structure that failed. And normally, on a normal day, just constructing a vault, it’s going to take a couple of days, and that’s a normal day, dealing with it without rain and flooding and everything else,” Rodriguez said. “So that’s what happened in this one. Like I said, normally, we’ll go out there and we’ll do our best to get the power on as quickly as we can.”

Chvatal-Keane quickly responded. “You know that there were more than 30 homes that were affected for over 48 hours, right?” She also asked about other outages that affected hundreds of people in the community.

Rodriguez said the outage he referred to was the one that lasted the longest in the area, without acknowledging some residents were without power for 72 hours or more. He said he did not have specifics about other outages. Rodriguez said the “after action plan” will look at specific outages and he promised to return for a future meeting with more information.

The homeowners also asked about why communications were inaccurate or non-existent for customers, many of who waited in the dark for days thinking their power would come back on any minute. In some areas homes on one side of the street were without power while those on the other side had electricity. One resident complained about being told the power was on when it was not. Rodriguez said improvements to communications with customers will also be part of the “after action plan.”

“We’re going to come up with better ways to feed the system information. Understand, when we’re working storms, the numbers are going to fluctuate, because it depends on how the crews are reporting them to the system, and how they’re being logged into the system,” Rodriguez said. “So the numbers aren’t going to always be completely accurate. And also, it takes time for a crew to go out and assess and to give a general idea of how long it’s going to take. Once you dig into the work, oftentimes you find that it’s going to take more time to complete. So we’re looking at ways that we can make this more consistent, more accurate.” Rodriguez and the other LADWP officials said that crews were fully-staffed during the storms, but the number of outages citywide was overwhelming. The utility is in a multi-year effort to recruit and train more crews to better address issues in the future, and to keep pace with necessary repairs and upgrades to the utility system.

Yaroslavsky, Soto-Martinez and Councilwoman Nithya Raman, 4th District, introduced a motion last week calling on the LADWP to report to the City Council on what caused the citywide problems and what the utility is going to do to fix them. Yaroslavsky said the council district offices will work closely with the homeowners associations and residents to improve communications with the utility, and will keep them informed.

“The report back is going to include specific information on what power systems need to be upgraded, what the DWP operation plan is during an outage to communicate better with residents. I know one of the real frustrations was the lack of communication back and forth,” Yaroslavsky added. “The lack of accurate information coming from DWP, the mismatch between what the information online was showing and what people were experiencing on the ground was really frustrating. And then, [the report will outline] what remedies there are to harden our grid, make it more resilient and make sure that customer service is responsive, accurate, etc.”

Soto-Martinez said he was also dissatisfied with the LADWP’s response to the outages, and will be monitoring the situation closely to make sure the utility follows through on promises to make improvements.

“I was not satisfied. I did not sense remorse or an acceptance of failure,” Soto-Martinez said after the March 6 meeting. “A lot of their answers were just kind of automatic. I did not sense they were genuine and I was deeply disappointed in that. I walked away from it with that feeling, because people want accuracy, they want real information. I think if people know it’s going to take three days [to restore power], at least you know. The one good thing is the DWP was giving us, including the council members, an insight into how they work. So now I know what to ask for specifically. Some of the motions I hope to introduce are very specific to the information that they gave us.”

The LADWP officials said they would return at a future date to better inform the homeowners associations and the public. Chvatal-Keane said she is waiting.

“I’m still sort of reeling from this. Who do they answer to?” Chvatal-Keane said. “I am going to ask for a timeline for specific information, especially about what is going to happen going forward.”