By XAMXAM
SAN FRANCISCO — On a rainy Saturday evening, as darkness settled over the city earlier than usual, the lights went out across large swaths of San Francisco. Trains halted mid-route. Traffic lights blinked off at major intersections. Businesses shuttered abruptly. In some neighborhoods, the blackout was so complete that the city seemed to fold in on itself, reduced to headlights, phone screens, and confusion.
By nightfall, more than 130,000 residents — nearly a third of the city — were without power.
What followed was not just a test of infrastructure, but of governance.
The outage, which officials later attributed to a fire at a power substation under investigation, rippled quickly through the city’s tightly wound systems. Bay Area Rapid Transit stations closed. Municipal subways went silent. Major corridors descended into gridlock as drivers navigated intersections without signals, many rediscovering, awkwardly, the rules of a four-way stop. Emergency officials urged residents to stay home if they could. Rain continued to fall.
Perhaps the most striking images came from the streets themselves. Self-driving taxis, a symbol of the region’s technological ambition, froze in place when the grid failed. Some stopped mid-lane, others clustered at odd angles, their sensors useless without electricity. Videos circulated of passengers trapped inside vehicles, waiting for help. What had been marketed as the future of urban mobility suddenly looked fragile, even eerie.
This was not a localized outage. Neighborhoods from the Richmond and Sunset districts to Civic Center, SoMa, and Golden Gate Park were affected. The Golden Gate Bridge briefly lost power. A matinee performance of Moulin Rouge was canceled mid-show, audiences spilling into the dark outside. For hours, the city’s famed density became a liability rather than a strength.
And through it all, one absence became increasingly conspicuous.
Governor Gavin Newsom, one of the most visible political figures in the country and a frequent presence on social media, was nowhere to be heard in the immediate aftermath. As residents searched for updates, reassurance, or even acknowledgment, there was silence from the state’s highest office. City officials relayed information from the utility company and emergency operations center. Police directed traffic. Transit agencies issued alerts. But from the governor, there was nothing.
The quiet was jarring precisely because it departed from expectation. Newsom is no stranger to rapid response messaging. He is known for swift statements during national controversies, sharp rebukes of political opponents, and carefully staged appearances during crises. His national profile, and his rumored presidential ambitions, have only heightened that perception.
In this moment, however, leadership appeared decentralized and distant.
To be fair, power outages are often chaotic and information arrives unevenly. Investigations take time. Utility companies move cautiously before assigning cause or timeline. No governor personally flips a switch to restore electricity. Yet in moments of disruption, symbolic leadership matters. People look for someone to speak plainly about what is known, what is not, and what comes next.
Instead, questions filled the vacuum. How could a single substation fire cripple such a large portion of one of the world’s most technologically sophisticated cities? Why did backup systems fail so comprehensively? What does this say about the resilience of California’s aging grid, especially as extreme weather and energy demand increase?
The blackout also underscored a deeper tension in California’s identity. The state presents itself as a model of innovation, climate leadership, and digital infrastructure. Yet its basic systems — electricity, transit, housing — often show strain under stress. A city that can deploy autonomous vehicles at scale still struggles to keep trains running when the power drops. A state that champions progress remains vulnerable to failures that feel unsettlingly analog.
By late evening, officials could not say when power would be restored. More rain was forecast. Utility crews worked, but clarity was scarce. Online, frustration mounted. “Where is the governor?” trended as a refrain not just of political criticism, but of civic anxiety.
Eventually, the lights would come back on. They always do. But blackouts have a way of illuminating more than darkness. They reveal which systems are brittle, which promises are overstated, and which leaders understand that visibility in crisis is not optional.
San Francisco has endured earthquakes, fires, and pandemics. It is resilient, but resilience is not the same as invulnerability. As the city recovers from this outage, the larger question lingers beyond the technical cause.
When the grid fails, when innovation stalls, and when daily life grinds to a halt, who steps forward to steady the moment?
On this night, as much as the power, that answer seemed conspicuously absent.
