San Francisco's Richmond District lost power for nearly six hours Saturday — the fourth significant outage to hit the neighborhood in seven months — while PG&E's own public reporting tool simultaneously alarmed the city by showing more than 120,000 customers without electricity. The actual count, the utility later acknowledged, was roughly 9,400.

A malfunction during a routine substation procedure knocked out power across the Richmond and Golden Gate Park neighborhoods, stranding pharmacies, restaurants and small businesses without electricity for most of Saturday. PG&E's investigation into the cause is ongoing — but for a neighborhood that has absorbed at least four major outages since December, the frustration is no longer about any single incident.

San Francisco's Richmond District lost power for nearly six hours Saturday — the fourth significant outage to hit the neighborhood in seven months — while PG&E's own public reporting tool simultaneously alarmed the city by showing more than 120,000 customers without electricity. The actual count, the utility later acknowledged, was roughly 9,400.

PG&E attributed the inflated figure to a glitch in its public-facing outage tracking system. The utility has not explained what caused the data error or whether a fix is planned. By the time power returned Saturday afternoon, the discrepancy had produced a false picture of a near-citywide emergency layered atop what was, for the Richmond, an entirely real one.

The outage began around 9:45 a.m. when, according to PG&E, "a protective device on the system activated" during "a routine operational procedure between two San Francisco substations." What triggered the device remains under investigation — including whether a sparking power line reported by a resident near Anza Street and 16th Avenue played a role.

"It started smoking and sparking. Sparks were flying on the floor, then it exploded out of nowhere with a big power flash," resident Allyssa Walter told ABC7 News.

For businesses along Geary Boulevard, six dark hours were anything but routine. Tony Bastian, pharmacist at Joe's Pharmacy, said the outage left him unable to fully serve patients who depend on him. "If I don't have electricity, I cannot deliver that community service. I cannot deliver the health care I'm supposed to, and that is not right," he told ABC7. He called for structural change: "We need to come up with new infrastructure. This is not acceptable."

At Cigarettes Cheaper, employee Aziz Amari kept the store open by candlelight, accepting only cash. He watched his freezers stand silent. "Ice cream, when it melts, no one's going to buy it," he said.

At Royal Market and Bakery, owner Vardges Kazaryan toured his darkened shop by flashlight, bracing for refrigerated inventory losses. "No power, no people, no money," he told ABC7 News.

Traffic signals along Park Presidio Boulevard went dark, snarling Saturday traffic across the neighborhood. The area's last major disruption before this was in December, when a fire at a PG&E substation knocked out power across a wide swath of the city, according to ABC7 News. Saturday's incident is at least the fourth significant outage the neighborhood has absorbed since then.

As for the 120,000-customer figure that circulated Saturday morning — more than twelve times the actual scope of the outage — PG&E has said only that it was a system error. No explanation of what failed, no timeline for a fix, no acknowledgment of what it means when a major utility's own public safety tool cannot accurately report a crisis in real time.

PG&E said its investigation into Saturday's outage remains ongoing.