The prolonged, dangerous heat wave baking Southern California caused outages that left tens of thousands of people without power and forced the cancellation of a show at the Hollywood Bowl on Sunday.
More than 17 million people were under an excessive heat warning, the highest alert category, until at least Monday, and the National Weather Service warned of dangerous fire conditions. Firefighters have been struggling to contain a large wildfire raging east of Los Angeles that has forced more than 11,000 people to evacuate their homes and injured three firefighters.
The Hollywood Bowl, one of Los Angeles’ biggest venues, announced the cancellation on Sunday evening, shortly before the concert was scheduled to start, citing a power outage. The Australian singer-songwriter Vance Joy, one of the artists scheduled to perform, said on social media that the power outage was caused by the heat.
Around 24,000 customers across California were without power by early Monday, according to poweroutages.us. The majority were concentrated in Los Angeles, Riverside and San Diego.
The Weather Service warned that in Los Angeles and surrounding areas, temperatures would soar to dangerous highs of 100 to 110 degrees Fahrenheit during the day, and nights would hover in the 70s, providing little relief. Early Friday, temperatures in the hills near Santa Barbara remained near 100 degrees past midnight, prompting the Weather Service to issue the most severe alert.
Parts of Santa Barbara County and the Western Santa Ynez Range, northwest of Los Angeles, were under a red flag warning until Monday night. That is the highest National Weather Service alert for conditions — warm temperatures, low humidity and high winds — that may result in extreme fires.
The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, one of the providers in the area that was experiencing power outages, said that during extreme, prolonged heat waves, “our electric equipment can overload and overheat when it doesn’t have the ability to cool down overnight.”
The current outages were mainly caused by overloaded cables and overheated equipment and transformers, the company said. About 15,000 of its 1.5 million customers were without power as of 6 p.m. on Sunday, and in some cases, it might take more than 24 hours to restore power, the company said on social media.
A large, uncontrolled blaze named the Line fire continued to rage in San Bernardino County, east of Los Angeles, on Sunday. The fire, which started on Thursday, exploded in size over the weekend. It burned over 20,000 acres and was zero percent contained early Monday.
The post Hollywood Bowl Cancels Show as Heat Wave Knocks Out Power appeared first on New York Times.
