What happened

An underground electrical vault caught fire near Broadway and Newport Avenue in Long Beach's Bluff Heights area at about 6:40pm, prompting Southern California Edison to de-energize the line while firefighters extinguished the blaze and utility crews began repairs. SCE's outage map showed 26,626 customers without power at the peak across coastal neighbourhoods including Bluff Park, Alamitos Beach and Belmont Shore. Power returned progressively overnight, but 16,456 customers remained offline at 6am on 24 August during a regional high-heat advisory. SCE described the cause as an equipment problem; no deliberate act was reported. This is recorded as a large accidental local distribution-grid incident, not an attack. The marker is placed near the reported vault location rather than asserting a precise underground-asset coordinate.

When cited sources give different casualty, damage or spill figures for this event, they’re reported side by side above rather than merged into one number. See how confidence levels work.