In an unprecedented electrical blackout that started on Saturday, 20-December-2025; about a quarter of the San Francisco City and County lost power. Nearly the entire Northwest quadrant of the entire city lost power. Approximately 130,000 utility accounts were affected. Most of those accounts had their power restored within one or two days, but nearly 20% of those accounts had to wait nearly three days (supposedly the longest wait was around 65 hours) until their power was fully restored.
This outage map, taken from PG&E's website, shows hundreds of thousands of denizens were without power. In terms of landmass, it seems about a quarter of San Francisco's 50 square miles were out of power. The outages is more concentrated in the Western portion of the city - a portion of the city that is mostly a mix of small businesses and residential customers. The Eastern half of the city is where the banks, tech companies, and are ports are more concentrated; the Eastern portion was affected to a lesser degree than the Western portion.
The cause of the blackout takes place in the Eastern side of the map - a major electrical substation at 8th Street and Mission Street caught fire and thus, electricity had to be shut off for much of the city for fire fighters to safely put out the fire.
The economic damage is estimated to be in the millions, as thousands of stores were unable to serve their customers - especially during the holiday rush. Thousands of workers were told not to come to work since the lack of power meant that normal work couldn't be done or since customers wouldn't be coming anyways.
Food waste is another concern; thousands of tons of food were thrown out by residential and commercial customers. As the food sometimes couldn't be cooked (if one has an electric stove) nor stored (iceboxes run on electricity).
The white car above is a Waymo-brand robotic taxi. Waymo is a driverless-car solution system owned by Alphabet Inc., the parent company of Google Inc.
Traffic lights stopped working. Robotic taxis (Waymos) stopped working and stalled in the middle of the streets, often in the middle of intersections. It is unknown why the vehicles stopped mid-intersection, as the cars themselves have their own mobile batteries and are not dependent on the electric grid while they are providing taxi services. Some residents of San Francisco speculate that there was a Waymo Data Center that probably lost power, or a Communications Relay antenna lost power and the communications between the cars and the Data Center ceased, and the Waymo taxis have limited on-board processing. I don't know how true this is, as this is a speculation and Waymo spokespersons have not been able to comment on the specifics. Tesla's Robotic Taxis seemed to be less-affected as the cars seem to do significant processing on-board and in the San Francisco area, Tesla's fleet is also staffed with a Tesla employee safety monitor (Waymo's fleet in San Francisco does not have any employees in the car itself).
Emergency personnel had to rescue individuals with medical conditions (many have medical devices reliant on a regular power source), the elderly, and disabled citizens and take them to school gymnasiums that were set up with diesel generators so their needs would be able to be met.
Dozens of elevators lost power, and emergency crews had to rescue some people who were stuck inside elevators.
Even City Hall lost power and eventually had to close. City government eventually reopened after diesel generators became operational. The Mayor spoke to news outlets imploring people to stay home and warning drivers to be extra careful due to the lack of traffic lights.
Subway stations had to close, since the trains (which are electric trains, not diesels) couldn't run without mains power for an extended period.
Performances such as plays were being cancelled, since the loss of power meant the actors couldn't perform safely.
Also, hundreds of thousands of people were unable to charge their Apple Watches and smart-watches. The scarce availability of power meant these devices often ran out of power. Smart watches typically have about a 20-48 hour power reserve but need to be charged by a wall plug. Mechanical watches and battery watches reliably tell the time; the former by the means of mechanical action that stores energy in a mainspring. I can picture hundreds of individuals are rummaging in their drawers and closets looking for the mechanical watch that they stopped using when they got their smart watch - after realizing they wouldn't be able to tell the time in a few hours once their smartwatch battery was exhausted.
San Francisco, with its proximity to Silicon Valley with major tech company headquarters, is sometimes seen as a trend-setting city when it comes to technology. But, the city witnessed how technology can become a crutch and an unreliable one if the electrical power were to fail over a massive area. Wearing a mechanical watch at least allows one to be able to reliably tell the time (a necessity for coordination and communication) in unprecedented times such as these.
In a time when almost nothing worked; those with a mechanical watch on their wrists, were at least able to tell the time.
Oddly, in December 2003, a very similar blackout occurred. The same electrical substation caught fire. About 120,000 accounts were affected. Same problems; stuck elevators, performances cancelled, trains stopped, lots of traffic since there were no traffic lights... But two major differences; there were no robotic cars yet and smart-watches weren't invented yet. The city was chaotic but manageable. Since there was no immediate emergency, the Mayor, Willie Brown, and Mayor-elect, Gavin Newsom (now California Governor), continued their evening party with Gordon Getty who was celebrating his 70th birthday. District Attorney-elect Kamala Harris (who ran for President of USA in the 2024 election) was also present at the party. The news would eventually report that after two days the electricity was restored.
Sometimes I wonder, are we overly dependent on electricity? Human progression is not always progressive. And I probably want my smartwatch to have more than a 20 to 48 hour power reserve in the case of a long blackout! Not a likely problem for many of us since if you're reading WatchProSite, you're likely a watch lover!
Have a wonderful Holiday Season to ALL!
Credits: Power Outage Graphic from Pacific Gas and Electric (Electricity utility company); Photos From SF Standard News, CBS, and TechCrunch.
