San Francisco supervisors question PG&E over December substation fire that left 130,000 customers without power

Hearing set to examine causes, communications and customer impacts after citywide blackout

San Francisco supervisors convened a public hearing Feb. 12 to question Pacific Gas and Electric Co. executives about a sweeping winter outage that followed a failure at the Mission Substation and left large sections of the city without electricity for days.

The outage began Dec. 20, 2025, after a circuit breaker failure led to a fire at the substation near Mission and Eighth streets. The blackout disrupted service for roughly 130,000 customers, affecting homes, businesses and city infrastructure, including traffic signals across multiple neighborhoods. Electricity was restored to all affected customers by Dec. 23.

At issue for supervisors is how the failure occurred, what protections were in place to prevent a single equipment problem from cascading into a citywide emergency, and whether PG&E’s operational response and communications met the needs of residents, emergency services and City departments.

Planned outages underscored the fragility of temporary fixes

In January, PG&E carried out additional planned outages tied to repair and testing work at the damaged substation, reinforcing concerns about reliability in the weeks after the fire.

• A planned outage began just after midnight Jan. 19, 2026, in the Civic Center area, affecting about 3,600 customers and lasting into the morning as crews conducted testing and assessed remaining damage.
• A second planned outage followed just after midnight Jan. 20, 2026, affecting about 14,000 customers in the Richmond District for roughly two hours, with a small portion of the Sunset District also impacted.

PG&E relied on temporary systems while work continued, and the planned shutoffs were presented as steps toward returning customers to normal service after repairs.

Customer credits and accountability questions

PG&E said impacted residential customers would automatically receive $200 in bill credits, and impacted businesses would receive $2,500. City leaders have sought greater clarity on how PG&E determined eligibility, how quickly credits would be applied, and what additional relief may be available for losses not covered by utility credits.

Traffic safety and autonomous vehicle disruptions to be addressed separately

Supervisors also flagged street-safety issues that emerged during the blackout, including widespread signal outages and reports that autonomous vehicles stopped or became immobilized in dark intersections. A second hearing is planned for March focused specifically on traffic impacts and the performance of autonomous vehicles during the emergency.

The Feb. 12 session centered on causation, restoration decisions and the measures PG&E says it will take to prevent a recurrence of an outage of similar scale.

The hearing is expected to feed into follow-up oversight, including requests for written timelines, maintenance and inspection records, and details on substation redundancy, protection systems and emergency coordination protocols used during the December incident.