Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) reports that nearly 20,000 customers lost electric service yesterday due to rain-related power outages. More than 119 LADWP electric crew members were working around the clock to restore power as quickly and safely as possible.

As of approximately 5:30 p.m. Nov. 27, about 9283 residential and commercial customers had lost power -- about 1 ½ % of the LADWP's 1.4 million power customers citywide. Power was restored earlier in the day for about 7059 customers in some neighborhoods of South and South Central Los Angeles, Chatsworth, Montecito Heights, Van Nuys and Hollywood.

About 7000 of those customers were affected by an outage that occurred at 12:50 p.m. and knocked out a power distributing station in the East Los Angeles area. The majority of those customers were expected to have power restored by 9 p.m.

LADWP crews were also tackling outages affecting customers in South Los Angeles, and Hyde Park, as well as some neighborhoods of Hollywood, Mid-City, Downtown, and Valley Village.

LADWP dispatched about 40 electric maintenance crews to make repairs and crews were working around the clock to restore power.

Outages caused by the rainstorm began early yesterday morning and continued throughout the day. LADWP electric trouble dispatch received close to 1700 customer calls yesterday.