A planned power outage Sunday in Long Beach to replace some Southern California Edison equipment cut electrical service to the Hilton Long Beach Hotel, shutting off the structure’s elevators, and forcing hotel staff and guests to climb up and down flights of stairs with luggage, officials said.
A woman working at the Hilton’s front desk who spoke on the condition of anonymity said power went out about 11 a.m., stopping elevators and closing the bar and restaurant until at least Monday.
She said hotel workers put up portable sun-powered lamps and used back up generators that provided enough light to continue operation of the hotel, located in the 700 block of Long Beach’s fashionable Ocean Boulevard.
The desk employee said she and others were told that Southern California Edison aimed to return power by 7 p.m., but that deadline had passed without success.
“The outage affected three properties or customers with the Hilton being the largest,” Edison spokeswoman Many Ann Milbourn said. “It was a planned outage that began around 11:30 a.m. and was expected to last until 7 p.m., but that timeline has been pushed back to 9 p.m. or 9:30 p.m.”
Milbourn said the electrical shutdown was needed to replace a capacitor bank at a nearby substation that is used to support electrical service, she said.
The outage was bounded by West Broadway on the north, West Ocean Boulevard on the south, Queens Way on the east and West Shoreline Drive on the west, Milbourn said.
City News Service queries of desk personnel at four upscale landmark hotels not far from the Hilton in downtown Long Beach — The Renaissance, The Westin, the Hyatt Regency and the Hyatt Centric — revealed that none of those facilities were affected by the outage.