Reversing course, Southern California Edison canceled a scheduled maintenance outage planned for Sunday, March 22 in a West Covina neighborhood.
The outage was going to shut off power to 50 homes to replace poles for “high fire compliance … to minimize any risk factor to the public and of course maintain SCE infrastructure.”
Because all of Los Angeles County is now under “Safer at Home” guidelines, some West Covina residents were afraid to go dark given their need for internet, medical devices and refrigerators.
So some, including 67-year-old Norma Levario, reached out to Mayor Tony Wu to see what he would do about it.
“I don’t give a damn if they want to change the pole, wait two weeks,” Wu said in an interview earlier this week.
While Wu and City Manager David Carmany reached out to SCE to see if the utility could halt or postpone the scheduled maintenance, it appeared SCE would continue with its plan at that time, reducing the number of homes affected from then-400 to 50.
Then, Wu got an email on Friday, March 20 from SCE saying the whole project is off.
His constituents are thrilled: “You cannot believe it,” he said. “All those seniors, all the relief they have.”
One of those seniors is Levario, who is just happy that she and her neighbors can focus on staying healthy.
“It’s one less thing people have to worry about,” Levario said. “They can relax and pay attention to themselves and just worry about their health.”