San Francisco lights flicker again: two Sunday outages leave PG&E searching for answers

San Francisco had one of those Sunday moments nobody wants: lights out, devices dead, traffic signals dark, and everyone reaching for a phone that may soon need charging. In the evening, Bernal Heights was hit. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, PG&E reported an unplanned power outage there at around 5:30 p.m. By 6:20 p.m., the utility said power had been restored. But that was not the only interruption of the day. Earlier on Sunday morning, about 1,600 customers in the Mission District and Castro lost power in a separate outage that lasted roughly an hour. PG&E said the cause was still under investigation. The uncomfortable detail: this was already another Mission District outage in the same week. On Thursday, more than 600 customers between 22nd and 24th streets and between Dolores and Mission streets lost power; PG&E cited damaged equipment. This was not a nationwide blackout or a disaster movie. But small interruptions are warning lights in everyday life. Refrigerators, internet routers, lamps, chargers, elevators, garage doors, traffic lights and card payments all depend on one thing: electricity. The key question is not why Bernal Heights briefly went dark. The key question is what you would have done if 50 minutes had suddenly become five hours. Source: San Francisco Chronicle, June 22, 2026.