Power Outage Monday Evening in Fernside

A small number of homes in Alameda's Fernside neighborhood were without power for about 80 minutes Monday evening.

The outage started around 6 p.m. and power was restored at 7:20 p.m, according to 's Bill Garvine.

"The guys have restored power, but they aren’t quite sure what caused it yet," Garvine said. "It could have been the weight of tree limb that blew into a line or small animal that got in and blew some fuses so the system shut down."

Garvine says safety is the first priority for AMP, then restoration. In the morning, crews will do a more thorough investigation into the cause of the outage.

"Sometimes, particularly at night, we won’t be able to spot the cause," Garvine said. "We’ll do that in the daylight."

A Patch reader reported that power was out on one side of several streets.

"It's the strangest thing to drive down one of the affected streets where half is brightly lit with Christmas and holiday lights while the other half is pitch dark," he wrote.

Garvine says the way lines are constructed, almost like the circulation system in a human body, one house can be without power while another next door is lit.

"It just depends on what circuit each house is on," he said. 

Tonight's outage was considerably smaller than the one during last week's wind storm, which customers mid-Island.

"We always regret when service is interrupted and we’re glad the guys were able to get it back up," Garvine said.