Briefly in the news

-- Deepa Bharath

Several offices and businesses in and around Birch Street and

MacArthur Boulevard suffered a power outage Monday afternoon for about an

hour following a switch failure in an underground vault, officials said.

Fire alarms went off at California National Bank in the 1300 block of

Dove Street about 3 p.m. after a building engineer saw smoke coming out

of an underground vault, said Edward Gallegos, dispatch shift supervisor.

“There was light smoke in the building and firefighters started to do

partial evacuation of the building,” he said.

Gallegos also said the Fire Department received calls from some people

who were trapped in an elevator in the building.

But once firefighters forced entry into the vault, they saw no

imminent danger and started getting people back into the building about

3:35 p.m., he said.

Edison engineers responded to the call and started making repairs

right away, spokesman Paul Klein said. He said 68 customers suffered from

the power outage that happened soon after the switch failed.

About eight Newport Beach police officers directed traffic at some of

the busy intersections for about an hour until power was restored,

officials said. But they said no collisions or incidents occurred.