An underground explosion in an electrical vault near Point Dume about noon today caused outages expected to last up to nine hours.
The explosion occurred about noon near Pacific Coast Highway and Heathercliff Road, according to the county fire department.
Robert Villegas of Southern California Edison said 2,848 customers were without power at the height of the outage triggered by the explosion. By 3:30 p.m., only 907 customers were without electrical power.
Sgt. Vanessa Barnard of the sheriff’s Malibu-Lost Hills station said some traffic lights in the area “were coming back on intermittently” about 3:15 p.m.
Deputies directed traffic away from the vault where SCE crews were working to fix the problem.
