Residents allowed back into Sacramento senior high-rise after evacuation in wake of fire
Power was restored Wednesday at a downtown Sacramento high-rise, where scores of elderly residents were forced to evacuate the night before in the wake of a utility substation fire a block away that left hundreds of buildings downtown without electricity.
The Edgewater apartments were reopened several hours after power was reconnected around 11 a.m. Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency spokeswoman Angela Jones said staff inspected the building first to make sure everything was functioning properly before residents were allowed back in by the evening.
The chain of events for the more than 150 elderly residents started Tuesday when firefighters responded around 11:45 a.m. to the fire at a Sacramento Municipal Utility District substation located at Sixth and H streets.
SMUD immediately de-energized the substation, which shut down electricity for about 1,300 SMUD customers. The outage severed power to the Edgewater and dozens of other buildings in a 12-block-by-5-block area. SMUD officials as of Wednesday said the cause of the fire is unknown and being investigated.
The utility said in a statement Tuesday night the fire did “extensive” damage to one of the three networks powered by Substation A. SMUD re-energized the other two networks Wednesday morning, restoring power for about 750 customers by 9 a.m. About 550 remained without power. SMUD officials said they expected to restore power to all customers by Friday morning.
The Sacramento Fire Department made the call around 7 p.m Tuesday to evacuate Edgewater, a 12-story affordable housing complex for seniors operated by the Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency, on the 600 block of I Street.
Fire Department spokesman Capt. Keith Wade said the decision to evacuate was made after fire personnel responded to multiple calls for service at the building and noticed that the fire suppression system was not enabled due to the lack of power.
“We are going door-to-door,” he said Tuesday evening. “It’s an evacuation that is not voluntarily. They have to go.”
On Wednesday, Wade said there were no further mandatory evacuations at nine other downtown housing complexes that were a concern for fire officials. Residents with medical conditions were relocated as needed, and fire watches were in place to make sure the buildings were safe throughout the night.
Mary Manning, 62, was allowed to retrieve medication from her fourth-floor apartment Wednesday morning. She’s lived in Edgewater for nine years but stayed at her daughter’s home overnight.
“Oh, my God, this was crazy,” Manning said. “Thank God I have daughters I could be with last night.”
Victoria Foreman, 64, also tried to return to her apartment Wednesday morning and was told to try again at 3 p.m. She’s lived there since 2002. She said she waited in her ninth-floor apartment in the dark until firefighters arrived to escort her out of the building.
“It was scary,” said Foreman, who stayed with friends. “There were no lights in the hallways, too. I had to come down the stairs.”
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Keywan Ranjbar said his parents who are in their 80s have lived in the Edgewater building for seven years. They have an apartment on the eighth floor with a bathroom that continued to function after the outage.
“Everything is OK with them, with the exception of the darkness,” Ranjbar said.
His father has back problems and couldn’t use the stairs to get out of the building, and the elevators were not working.
Sacramento Fire Chief Gary Loesch said it was the first time the city has conducted an evacuation operation this large.
The Edgewater building did not have a backup generator for the fire-suppression system or for residents who require oxygen through devices that require electricity, Wade said.
Wade said firefighters grew concerned after seeing a number of residents using candles for light. The building’s heating system was also offline as temperatures dropped into the 40s.
That combination could have prove hazardous, Wade said.
“We’re not going to run that risk,” he said.
Other parts of daily life in the city’s core were affected by the outage at historic Substation A.
The outage knocked out traffic lights along I and J streets, city officials said. It also disrupted downtown light rail service, with Sacramento Regional Transit reporting various outages along its blue, gold and green lines. RT used several bus bridges for riders early Wednesday.
The incident additionally forced a pair of Sacramento County office buildings, including the courts, to stay closed to the public Wednesday morning. Those sites regained power and reopened in the afternoon.
Fire personnel and city police teamed up to move Edgewater residents to City Hall for the night using RT buses: SHRA provided hotels to “the most medically frail.”
“Our team is trying to triage our people to vacant hotels and motels; some are connecting with family,” Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg said at a news conference during evacuations. “Everyone is going to be cared for.”
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Joseph A. Nelson’s brother, 72-year-old Kenneth Nelson, has lived in the Edgewater building for eight years. His brother has an apartment on the 12th floor that lost running water when the power went out.
“He can’t use the stairs, they’re going to have to bring him down,” Nelson said of his brother, a cardiac patient who struggles to walk with a cane.
Nelson said his brother would likely have to stay in one of the shelters.
Sacramento Director of Emergency Management Daniel Bowers said the city was partnering with SMUD to make sure anyone continuing to be affected by the power outage Wednesday would receive a motel voucher.
“Everything went very, very smooth,” Bowers said about the City Hall shelter. “We didn’t have any injuries, no friction points and overall just very proud of the response.”
This story was originally published December 15, 2021 at 6:46 PM.
