Power restored to 38,000 in East Bay

About 38,000 PG&E customers who lost power in the East Bay this afternoon have had their service restored, according to a utility spokeswoman.

The outage started around 1:45 p.m. and the power came back on just before 3 p.m., PG&E spokeswoman Tamar Sarkissian said:

“We are still investigating the exact cause but we do know that the outage originated at a substation in Berkeley.”

The outage also affected customers in Albany, El Cerrito, Kensington, Oakland, Richmond and San Pablo, she said. The Downtown Berkeley BART station was shut down temporarily because of the outage, during which trains were not stopping at the station.

BART officials said the station has since reopened and that normal service has resumed. Berkeley City College also shut down temporarily this afternoon, but reopened as of 3:30 p.m.

Berkeley police said the outage affected several intersections, disabling stoplights for some time. Police advise the public to exercise caution when approaching an uncontrolled intersection and to treat it like a four-way stop.