Power Outage in Menlo Park Stokes Apocalyptic Fears

More than 2,600 homes and businesses in Menlo Park lost power Thursday night after a connection between poles was broken, said a Pacific Gas & Electric spokesperson. 

At 7:53 p.m. "a connection failed," said Jana Morris, PG&E spokesperson. The exact location of the failure was not clear. 

Crews are on the scene attempting to restore power, which at 10 p.m. was still out at about 850 homes. 

The power outage impacted people’s ability to purchase things at Walgreens, tweeted @Jarek Wilkiewicz, who shared a photo of the sign employees pasted on the front door. 

“First world problem,” he tweeted. 

Others speculated that this outage was the first sign of the apocalypse that had been foretold by the Mayans.

“End of the world hits Menlo Park?” tweeted @attillamong. 

“Just a coincidence, right? #MayanApocalypse,” tweeted Justin Christensen. 

Pacific Gas & Electric cannot confirm exactly caused the outage, leaving many in the dark.

“I blame the griswalds,” tweeted @pldonnely.

PG&E expects to restore power by 4 a.m. on Friday. 

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