Updated at 8 p.m. with information from Southern California Edison.
A brief power outage that affected about 2,500 Murrieta and Temecula residents Friday afternoon was caused by a car backing into wire, a Southern California Edison spokeswoman told Patch.
Though the SCE website previously attributed that and another outage affecting west Murieta and Temecula to storm conditions, SCE Spokeswoman Maureen Brown said that was not the case.
Residents in an area near Harveston in Temecula, from Winchester Road to Murrieta Hot Springs Road, only briefly lost power, Brown said.
"There was a 30-second disruption at about 4:12 p.m.," Brown said.
This occurred when a car backed over a wire, causing two large circuits to come together, which in turn triggered smoke alarms to go off in homes in the affected area, according to Brown.
Brown added that the circuits coming together also affected 560 customers in west Temecula and Murrieta.
"It was really one outage with two circuits, about 2,500 on one and 560 on another," Brown said.
CAL FIRE/Riverside County firefighters responded to the Harveston area at about 4:15 p.m. when the power surge "set off smoke alarms and tripped electrical breakers," according to CAL FIRE/Riverside County Spokeswoman Melody Hendrickson.
As of 5:45 p.m., Hendrickson reported there were "no significant fire activity at this time, no injuries reported and no displacements."
