July 17--Preston Andres is one of the thousands of Long Beach residents who has been left without power for more than two days this week. He's thrown out all the perishable food in his refrigerator because of the blackout and said he plans on going to the Department of Social Services on Friday afternoon to apply for emergency food stamps.
"Me and wife sort of live check to check," he said, adding that the outage has "put a stop to our lives."
The pair haven't been able to charge their cellphones or keep up with updates on the situation on TV.
"It's primitive," said Andres, 48, who works as a custodian at the First Congregational Church of Long Beach. "It's like we are cave people."
Nearly 6,000 SCE customers have experienced short- or long-term outages since a vault fire Wednesday afternoon sparked several underground explosions that sent manhole covers into the air.
Since then, crews restored power to most customers only to see additional work knock some of that power out again.
"Right now I'm at a local restaurant and they're letting me use their electrical outlets," resident Rebecca Quinn told the Los Angeles Times on Friday morning.
Like her neighbors, Quinn spent part of this week aimlessly wandering downtown Long Beach streets looking for any business with electricity. Her stove is electric too, so cooking is out of the question.
"I don't think I'll ever live in a place that's all electrical again," she said with a laugh.
The outage didn't just wreak havoc on residents. Los Angeles' Metro rail service to the area was interrupted, multiple on and offramps to the 710 Freeway were closed and several downtown intersections turned into four-way stops.
An event on water conservation scheduled in the city for Saturday was canceled.
At a 100-unit apartment complex Peter DeBruyn calls home, the power has been out since Wednesday afternoon, but not many people have thrown out their rotting food because of the dangerous walk in the dark to the dumpster.
"You basically need a seeing eye dog to get around," said DeBruyn, 70. "If you're elderly or disabled you're essentially imprisoned."
DeBruyn said he stays out during the day because there is nothing to do at home, but when the sun goes down in downtown Long Beach "you can't see anything."
DeBruyn, who works as an attorney, said he and another lawyer in the building have convinced the board at the apartment to split the cost of a generator with a nearby building. The utility has provided residents with flashlights and water, he said, but it's not enough to make up for the drastic drop in quality of life.
"There's no quality and there's no life, really," he said.
When the power went out on Wednesday, DeBruyn assumed it would be back on within a couple of hours -- then he went for a walk down the street and heard utility workers talking about how bad the blackout really was.
"We went from bad to worse, and now who knows?" he said.
At night, residents say, everything falls to a hush -- cars don't whiz by and no one honks their horns or steps out for an evening walk.
"It's complete silence," Andres said. "It's not a peaceful quiet. It's ominous."
For breaking California news, follow @JosephSerna and @sarahparvini.
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UPDATE
12:58 p.m.: This post was updated with comments from residents.
This story was originally posted at 6:49 a.m.
