Power was cut to hundreds of customers in Auburn after a substation explosion Saturday.

A security guard near the Blocker Drive Pacific Gas & Electric facility heard a popping sound at about 3:45 p.m. and alerted emergency personnel after fire broke out on a patch of dried grass just outside the fence.

The outage took in portions of Downtown Auburn and caused slowdowns at key Highway 49 intersections with Palm Avenue and Fuelweiler-Elm avenues.

Firefighters were able to put out the fire within a half hour of the explosion.

Power was restored by just after 5:30 p.m. but with the temperature in the Auburn soaring to nearly 100 degrees, its absence was being felt.

About a half mile from the substation, on Industrial Drive, Ron and Lisa Fitfield had been picking up possessions they had stored in a storage locker and were caught behind the electronic gate.

With no way of getting their rental truck out, they waited for power to be restored or a storage locker business employee to open the gate.

"I thought we would be in and out," Ron Fitfield said.

They were off with their load about an hour later after the door was manually opened by an employee.

On Auburn Ravine Road, Virginia DeJaynes had exited her darkened apartment to sit in the breeze of the hallway and work on a crossword puzzle.

DeJaynes, a retired Old Town Auburn antiques store owner, said she had heard what she described as a "zing and a screech" at the time of the substation explosion.

"And then the lights went out," she said.

With the heat reaching 97 degrees outside shortly before 5 p.m. paramedics were dispatched to a neighbor of DeJaynes who suffered from multiple sclerosis and was concerned about the absence of air conditioning.

No reason for the power outage was immediately available but squirrels getting into the line at the station have been blamed by PG&E in the past.

The Journal's Gus Thomson can be reached at gust@goldcountrymedia.com.