A pair of power outages that left thousands of Long Beach residents in the dark for days stemmed from poor training and inadequate oversight of the electrical system, according to two reports released Tuesday by Southern California Edison.

Pete Dietrich, senior vice president for transmission and distribution for SCE, apologized for the July 15 and July 30 blackouts, saying management should have been more vigilant in preventing the power failures, which ultimately sent manhole covers flying and knocked out power to thousands.

“I take personal responsibility and accountability for the sequence of events that occurred,” he said. “We immediately began to take action. … We have been at this tirelessly.”

The failure of an underground cable splice at Ocean Boulevard and Pacific Avenue caused the July 15 outage, according to both an internal review and a report from an independent investigation by Davies Consulting.

Long Beach Mayor Robert Garcia addressed the reports in a statement to the Press-Telegram, saying the city appreciates SCE taking responsibility for the outages and putting measures into place to prevent future failures.

“However, we really need to await the findings of the independent Public Utilities Commission before drawing any final conclusions,” Garcia said. “These major outages were totally unacceptable and simply cannot happen again.”

Constance Gordon, a PUC spokeswoman, said in an email the state agency will review the reports as part of its ongoing investigation.

Her agency “expects Edison to immediately rectify any safety situation that is identified in the report and will be monitoring SCE closely,” Gordon said.

Lapses in oversight

SCE says in its report there was limited automation and remote monitoring of network protectors — devices meant to keep equipment failures from cascading. In several spots, they were installed without required equipment, which prevented them from operating as designed.

In addition, the report listed several other areas of inadequate oversight or faulty equipment:

• An inadequate computer system

• Lack of sufficient training for employees

• Attrition leading to the loss of employees with experience on the Long Beach network

• Inaccurate system maps

SCE said responsibility of the network was shared by several of its departments that left issues unaddressed.

For example, employees tried to inspect a network protector March 15, 2013, but they couldn’t get into the vault because of nearby construction. The crew made a note but didn’t return to make the inspection when access was available.

The network protector failed July 15 this year, contributing to the first outage.

A series of failures

About 30,700 customers lost power July 15 after two electrical circuits shut down and fires started in three underground vaults. The outage prompted community outrage and a CPUC investigation.

The trouble wasn’t over.

Downtown Long Beach was hit by another major outage July 30 when an underground vault fire and explosions initially killed power to 30,000 customers. The blackout drew further ire from community members and public officials alike.

The outages prompted Edison to secure 307 manhole covers in the downtown grid area with steel cables.

While the underground power network was designed to withstand a single component breakdown, a cable splice failure set off a chain reaction because network protection devices weren’t functioning.

The utility traced the blackouts to a series of systemic causes:

• Insufficient oversight of the city’s secondary power network

• Insufficient knowledge about network protector operations

• Failures of field personnel to inspect and install key electrical equipment

Unique challenges

The part of Long Beach’s power grid that failed — what’s called the Long Beach Secondary Network — stands alone in SCE’s service area. It was built in the mid‐1920s and completed over the following decades, and is the only network system in the utility’s service area. Other portions of SCE’s grid are served by a more simple setup known as a radial system.

Edison has already paid $1.8 million in bill credits and thousands of claims stemming from the July power outages, said David Song, a utility spokesman. That number includes claims made by residents and businesses.

Long Beach officials filed a $435,000 claim for damages on behalf of the city in October. No information about that claim’s status was available late Tuesday.

Moving forward

As a result of the investigations, an SCE-designated manager will be put in charge of overseeing the downtown network system. This overseer will have the proper resources, both in personnel, training, equipment and finances to properly monitor and maintain the network, according to SCE.

Dietrich said SCE continues to monitor the network. Analysis since the blackouts shows that although the system failed, its capacity is robust enough to continue to serve the downtown Long Beach area.

“The mistake that we made is in no way indicative of a lack of capacity or inability to serve (customers),” he said.

For Dietrich, the major takeaway is that lack of effective management and oversight directly led to the outages.

“If we had been effectively monitoring … we would have seen it coming,” he said, describing the incidents as a “perfect storm.”

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