El Camino College Campus Evacuated Because of Power Outage

TORRANCE, CA — A power outage has forced El Camino College to issue an evacuation order Monday, campus police said.

The college sent out a tweet at around 12:30 p.m. asking everyone to "safely" and "calmly" evacuate all buildings on campus and conduct classes outside if possible. The tweet did not mention the cause of the evacuation, however, El Camino College Police Department said it was because of a power failure on campus and nearly cities.

The tweet said an update will be provided at 2 p.m. via Twitter, Facebook and Nixle, a community alert website used by multiple public-safety agencies.

The outage started in Lawndale and affected a wide swath of the South Bay, Southern California Edison spokeswoman Mary Ann Milbourn. In all, 3,954 customers were affected in Lawndale, Redondo Beach and Torrance.

The cause of the outage was equipment failure, Milbourn said. Power was restored to all affected customers by around 1:30 p.m.

Classes at El Camino resumed at 2 p.m. Library services at the school, however, did not resume until 4 p.m. and only to first floor. Full service will resume Tuesday morning, the school said in a tweet.

-- Photo courtesy of El Camino College