The Great San Francisco Blackout of December 2025 continues into its third day for some residents, and Muni subway service remains disrupted due to ongoing impacts from the PG&E outage.
As of Monday morning, December 22, the power outage that began on December 20 has persisted for around 11,600 PG&E customers in San Francisco, primarily concentrated in the Outer Richmond and around the Civic Center area. PG&E has pledged full restoration of power to these areas by 2 pm Monday.
Several blocks on either side of Market Street between 8th Street and Van Ness remain in the dark, likely due to ongoing repairs at the PG&E substation at 8th and Mission where a fire reportedly occurred on Saturday afternoon. And as a result, San Francisco City Hall remains closed this morning, as KTVU reports, as does the Main Branch of the SF Public Library.
Muni subway service remains out, with no underground trains operating between Embarcadero and Castro stations. There is normal service on the K, L, and M lines to the west of Castro, with trains switching back and bus shuttles taking anyone downtown who's still going to to the office or to work downtown this week.
As happened on Sunday, the J-Church and N-Judah lines are being interlined (combined) for surface-only service between Balboa Park and Judah/La Playa, with riders needing to switch to bus shuttles at Church and Market to go downtown.
There remains only an incomplete explanation from PG&E as to how and why this outage began or became so widespread. We know about the substation fire, but that does not explain outages on the west side that began hours before that on Saturday.
And as we discussed Sunday, a very similar widespread outage that impacted around one-third of the city occurred on December 20, 2003, which was also a Saturday, and which was also blamed on a fire at the same substation at 8th and Mission.
"They call it a catastrophic fire and an incident I've been told they've only seen 2-3 times in decades," Mayor Daniel Lurie said, speaking to ABC 7. "There's a lot of questions that I have."
Perennial PG&E critic Tim Redmond, editor of 48 Hills, is once again calling for the utility to be kicked out of the city, saying this is "long, long overdue."
"Now an old transformer caught fire, and the company didn’t have the resiliency to avoid a blackout that impacted a third of the city," Redmond writes. "Now the case for public power is more clear than ever, and it’s time the supes hold a hearing on where the process is, what the next steps are, and how to move forward."
Previously: Massive Power Outage In San Francisco Leaves 200,000+ In the Dark, Disrupts Muni and BART
