Rain and heavy winds cause power outages at some L.A. schools
Darin and Terry Walters try to stay dry while shopping in the rain at the Mar Vista Farmers Market on Sunday.
A handful of Los Angeles Unified School District campuses were without power but open Monday after rain walloped the city Sunday and strong winds continued through the morning.
The schools affected include South Gate High School, Canyon Charter School, Mid-City’s Prescott School of Enriched Sciences and Marvin Avenue Elementary School, which also houses an early education center. Abram Friedman Occupational Center, 24th Street Elementary and 49th Street Elementary also lost power after school started Monday.
Another nine schools lost power Sunday, said district spokeswoman Elvia Perez, but power was restored before students returned to school.
At South Gate High, a partial outage made lights flicker and prevented some equipment from operating, Perez said. A generator is currently powering the cafeteria and the district sent a second generator to South Gate on Monday morning.
The other schools affected did not receive generators, said Mark Cho, the district’s deputy director for maintenance and operations. The district decides whether to send generators based on how long a power outage will last, conversations with the principal and whether the school has a freezer, Cho said.
At Avalon Gardens Elementary in Willowbrook, rain and winds knocked a tree down near the school’s administration building on Sunday, Perez said. No one was hurt and the administration building was unharmed.
Students around the district are not being kept inside Monday because of winds, Perez said.
L.A. Unified has been preparing for El Niño since August, stocking up on sandbags and rain gear, and revisiting its emergency plan.
The district is spending $6.1 million to replace old roofs at 10 of the district’s neediest buildings.
However, as of November, the completion dates for those projects ranged from April 12 to May 26, when the bulk of El Niño rains are expected to have passed.
As of noon, Perez did not know the number of roofing and flooding reports prompted by the rains.
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