It's disturbingly easy to throw PG&E off their power-supply game, as errant raccoons, balloons, and big-rigs have illustrated. But now the energy company can add another baddie to their enemies list: Drones.
At least, that's what was reportedly used to knock out power to 34 residences in Bernal Heights Sunday night. According to the Chron, the lights (and everything else) went out for about an hour in the area of Peralta Avenue and Hampshire Street at 5:04 Sunday night, after witness Scott Kurth says "he saw a flash of light and heard a loud pop on a power pole."
Moments after the power went out, "a man in his 30s came running up and admitted he had lost control of a drone he was flying at a nearby playground," and roped Kurth into helping him look for the downed device.
"When PG&E arrived, the drone pilot moved on," the Chron reports.
As of Monday morning, a PG&E spokesperson tells SFist that they still aren't sure what caused the outage. Crews did search for the alleged flying blackout machine Sunday night, the spokesperson said, but couldn't find any trace of it.
Previously: Exploding Transformer, Errant Raccoon Knock Out Power To Thousands Of San Franciscans
Crashed Big Rig Shuts Down De Haro Street, Knocks Out Power To Thousands
Valentine's Day Balloon Causes Power Outage In Concord