San Francisco Tenderloin and Civic Center Outage Followed Underground Vault Fire; Most Power Restored Wednesday

SAN FRANCISCO — October 22, 2026. An underground electrical vault fire near Van Ness Avenue and Bush Street caused a significant outage in the Tenderloin and Civic Center neighborhoods Wednesday evening, October 21, according to reporting from the San Francisco Chronicle, citing the San Francisco Fire Department and PG&E.

How neighboring California58 newspapers reported this regional incident

San Francisco News is the original local newsroom covering this city incident. Nearby editions published separate geographic-context briefs; these are not claims of outages in those towns:

Marin and coastal neighbors: Stinson Beach News; Bolinas News; Half Moon Bay News; Point Reyes Station News; Inverness News; La Honda News; Pescadero News; Bodega Bay News.

East Bay and Delta region: Sunol News; Livermore News; Brentwood News; Byron News; Discovery Bay News; Rio Vista News.

North Bay and Santa Cruz Mountains: Suisun City News; Yountville News; Sebastopol News; Boulder Creek News.

What happened?

Firefighters responded around 7:45 p.m. The outage affected approximately 2,775 PG&E customers, including areas between Geary Boulevard and McAllister Street. Emergency vehicles and street restrictions also affected some Muni routes. Officials reported no injuries.

When was power restored?

PG&E initially projected restoration after midnight, but its spokesperson said most customers had electricity again by approximately 9:15 p.m. Wednesday. That does not guarantee every individual customer was restored at that time. Anyone still without service should check PG&E’s current outage map.

Was the outage connected to California storms?

The reported cause was an underground vault fire, not a confirmed weather-related failure. This is a separate incident from storm outages in Fresno and San Luis Obispo counties and the Trona outage reported by Searles Valley News. For the wider picture, read California58’s statewide outage roundup.

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