Thousands of Southern California residents spent a cold, dark weekend without power since Friday.
During the storm, LADWP said a total of 79,000 residents experienced power outages, but the company said its repair crews were working around the clock.
In Arleta, it was easy to find the LADWP vans, but as workers scramble to restore power as soon as possible, some say it took too long.
“We’ve had enough of this, since Friday at 10 p.m. there was a power cut,” said María Tejeda, a resident of Arleta.
“That they were going to fix it in two hours (electricity), that they were going to fix it the next day, in the morning, and that in the afternoon, and we’ve already been without electricity for three days,” Giovanni said. Ramírez, a resident of Arleta.
Seeing the Telemundo 52 cameras, several neighbors quickly took the opportunity to complain about the interruption and the delay.
“Imagine the cold, and not being able to turn on the heating, not being able to make coffee, nothing,” Tejeda said.
Continuous rain and lots of snow is what this winter storm has left in its wake, affecting some areas where highways have been impacted, but some families are enjoying the snow a lot.
But for some, the lack of electricity goes much further than a simple inconvenience, the daughter of Francisco Betancourt suffers from a medical condition.
“For her, I have to grind her food, everything she eats is ground, and without electricity we already have two days longer than 48 hours, and nothing,” said Francisco Betancourt, a resident of Arleta.
Betancourt was forced to get a generator, but the breakdown doesn’t just affect houses on the streets, it’s also causing trouble and appears to have been the cause of this accident.
“The lights that don’t work, the other thing is that you have to stop when the lights don’t work and go one by one,” said Marco Carballo, involved in an accident.
LADWP employees work in several neighborhoods, but the process is slow and methodical, and they ask customers to be patient.
“We know they have priorities, but three days is already too much.”
At around 5:30 p.m. Monday, LADWP sent a statement to Telemundo 52 indicating that the number of customers still without power was around 27,000.
Many people have reported that the food in their fridges has gone bad, but in cases like these where the outage is due to a storm and not LADWP’s fault, the company is not responsible.