San Francisco was struck with a massive power outage on Saturday, which left about 130,000 residents without electricity. Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) reported that the blackout affected about one-third of the city’s customers and left large parts of the tech hub in darkness.
Officials reported the cause of the blackout to be a fire at a substation, which led to widespread loss of power. The lights went out across neighbourhoods such as Richmond, Presidio, and Golden Gate Park, which affected the public transport systems. Many traffic signals were reported not working, due to which the police had to manually manage the traffic.
San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie posted a video on X in which he said that, “I know this was a rough day… but for those of you who do not have power, we want to make sure you stay safe, check on your neighbors.”
Muni lines and traffic signals are impacted by the power outage. If you don’t need to travel tonight, please stay off the roads and stay inside.
We will be expanding officer presence at intersections and corridors to ensure the safety of those still on the road.
We remain in… pic.twitter.com/Q30y3SPXa9
— Daniel Lurie 丹尼爾·羅偉 (@DanielLurie) December 21, 2025
He stressed that the fire department and police were deployed across the city to support the affected people and ensure safety.
The outage affected business in the holiday season
Large parts of the tech hub, which has a population of more than 800,000 people, were left in darkness, which affected the businesses as well. According to many reports, parts of the city were covered in fog, which forced the commercial businesses to close at peak holiday season and left the normally busy streets deserted.
PG&E took to X and said that they had restored power to about 90,000 households by 9 pm Saturday and expected to restore the light to 40,000 more households overnight.
Update: #SanFrancisco Outage pic.twitter.com/iEhpPABZdA
— Pacific Gas & Electric (@PGE4Me) December 21, 2025
The outage also forced closures of autonomous cars, and the city’s rail lines were also closed. The full restoration of power was expected overnight, with PG&E confirming that the grid has been stabilised.
