Palm Springs businesses forced to close after power transformer explodes

A transformer fire in Palm Springs left more than 1,000 Southern California Edison customers without power and displaced seven units Monday evening, for some, lasting overnight.

Power was back for most SCE customers by Tuesday morning. An SCE spokesperson said yesterday’s outage doesn’t appear to be storm-related.

Shop owners downtown say business was already suffering due to the wet weather moving through the valley Monday into Tuesday, and the power outage forced them to shut their doors.

“The business lost power and I had a couple customers,” said Nika Shah at Fame Cigars and Wine. “It was pretty dark, it was raining, so we had no choice – shutting down the business.”

At another downtown business, Havaianas, a shoe store, an employee said they were already seeing fewer customers when the power went out.

“It’s a lot less people,” Raphael Polito said. “We depend on tourists walking by the store and our business is driven by tourists coming into the store, and when it’s raining it’s not good.”

Residents near downtown said they experienced explosions.

“We had a blowout with the transformer and then it ensued into our apartment here and caught fire for a while,” Kimm Byers said.

“All of a sudden there was a huge flash and explosion,” Craig Winczewski said. “Then there was another giant explosion right off this pole.”

A separate power outage near south Palm Springs knocked out power for some SCE customers for several hours Tuesday afternoon.

14 customers were without power, but the company had to de-energize power lines for more than 1,700 customers for 2 minutes. Power has been restored for those customers.

With more rain predicted, shop owners aren’t expecting business to improve this week.

“Business is gonna be slow again but we’ll hope people will come out,” Shah said.

And despite the rainy conditions, visitors to downtown said they aren’t letting it dampen their plans.

“If the weather’s bad we just delay whatever we’re planning, and we have to take it an hour at a time,” Marie Sweeney said. “Nice weather would be even better!”

Power was restored for all businesses and customers. SCE said the outage was not storm-related.

You can reach Jake Ingrassia on Twitter, Facebook or email him at jake.ingrassia@kesq.com.