Mission Substation Fire Cuts Power to 130,000 San Francisco Customers

A fire inside PG&E's Mission substation at 8th and Mission Streets in South of Market triggered a cascading blackout on December 20, 2025 that cut electricity to approximately 130,000 customers, roughly 30% of the utility's entire San Francisco base, on one of the busiest shopping Saturdays of the year.

The blaze broke out shortly before 1:10 p.m., causing what PG&E described as "significant and extensive" damage, including to a critical circuit breaker. The San Francisco Fire Department received the formal call at 2:16 p.m., according to SFFD Lieutenant Mariano Elias, and declared a one-alarm fire at 3:15 p.m. Firefighters had to ventilate dangerous levels of carbon monoxide before crews could safely enter the multilevel building. The fire was fully extinguished by approximately 6:15 p.m.

As crews worked the blaze, PG&E engineers de-energized additional portions of the grid for safety, causing the outage to cascade from roughly 40,000 initial customers to a peak of approximately 130,000 within two hours. By 5:41 p.m., PG&E confirmed 125,558 customers without power. Affected zones stretched from the Outer Sunset and Richmond to Haight-Ashbury, Chinatown, Hayes Valley, the Presidio, Golden Gate Park, the Western Addition, West of Twin Peaks, and parts of Downtown San Francisco.

The timing compounded the damage. The outage knocked out traffic signals citywide, forcing drivers to treat intersections as four-way stops. BART shuttered its Powell Street and Civic Center stations, while Muni Metro and the Central Subway suspended underground service. Waymo's autonomous vehicles stalled at darkened signals before the company took its service offline citywide at 7:21 p.m. The San Francisco Department of Emergency Management urged residents to avoid nonessential travel. Mayor Daniel Lurie issued a safety advisory to stay home, and by approximately 9 p.m. announced BART stations were reopening and Muni resuming, with additional officers deployed to key intersections.

PG&E restored power to approximately 95,000 customers by 11 p.m. Saturday, but recovery stretched far longer than anticipated. About 21,000 customers remained without power Sunday morning, 14,000 by Sunday evening, and 3,800 as late as Monday. Full power was not restored until 5:00 a.m. Tuesday, December 23, more than 60 hours after the outage began.

PG&E COO Sumeet Singh held a press conference Monday outside the damaged substation. "We are committed to understanding exactly what happened, why it happened, and owning the fixes," Singh said. Spokesperson Matt Nauman added: "This was a very serious situation; we know this resulted in some incredible inconvenience for customers, both residential and business, and we pledge to do everything we can to not have this happen again."

On December 22, PG&E announced automatic bill credits: $200 for residential customers and approximately $2,500 for businesses, with no claim required. Senior Vice President Vincent Davis said: "We recognize the significant impact this outage had on our customers, and we are committed to providing immediate and meaningful support." PG&E also opened a Community Resource Center at the Richmond Recreation Center, 251 18th Ave., and deployed six diesel generators at a secondary substation at 24th Avenue and Balboa Street at roughly $600,000 per day.

The outage landed exactly 22 years to the day after a previous mass blackout at the same Mission substation in December 2003. PG&E completed preventative maintenance there in October 2025 and conducted its most recent inspection on December 5, finding no problems either time. With a major storm forecast to deliver 4 to 10 inches of rain beginning Tuesday, more than 5,500 PG&E workers were already on storm duty as the city reckoned with what a single substation fire could inflict on its electrical grid.