SCE GETS LIT UP
Published in the Jan. 10, 2026 issue.
Southern California Edison (SCE) will likely not offer rebates for costs or inconvenience suffered during the multi-day blackout from June Lake to Bridgeport over the holidays, Matthew Paruolo, SCE’s Government Relations Manager, told the Mono County Board of Supervisors Tuesday.
“These outages were not caused or due to SCE negligence, quite the contrary,” Paruolo said. “We worked very hard to fix the problems once they happened. It was caused by extreme weather, which is, I think, the first sentence on the claims website.”
The Sheet first covered the outage in last week’s issue. It began on Christmas Eve, thrusting June Lake north through Bridgeport into darkness, and continued through into early this week. The outage also affected June Lake’s water treatment plant, all while Hwy. 395 was closed for three days due to the winter storm, trapping residents and visitors alike over the holiday.
“We had 19 stranded people that, through either poor preparation or poor luck, found themselves in town with nowhere to go,” Supervisor Paul McFarland said. “During a power outage, a hotel without a backup generator is simply a dark box.”
Consequently, the blackout hit the local tourism economy, but the cost to generate power independently also affected residents, a sting coming just months after SCE raised rates 13% (See Oct. 11 issue).
As a result of the damages, the Board of Supervisors and residents asked Paruolo to consider issuing rebates, but he largely waived off the request and said he’d need to check with his superiors. He insisted, rather, the storm was unusual in its size and warranted such a disruption.
“I get the comments saying, ‘I’ve lived here for 50 years, and the power has never gone out like this in the winter. We’ve had big storms.’ Well, the storm events are happening in different magnitudes now,” he said at the outset of his presentation.
He explained that crews were working around the clock to restore power, and repeatedly brought up that he himself missed Christmas with his family.
June Lake residents didn’t necessarily buy his excuses, and instead pushed forward that the slow response was rather an expression of SCE’s undervaluing of the rural community compared to more lucrative metropolitan areas.
“What is it with SCE prioritizing export of electricity to Southern California when we are right here? Well, we know what it is and it’s profits,” one resident grieved. “We are not a colony to be exploited.”
Paruolo is no stranger to these complaints, having for years acted as the SCE spokesperson listening to June Lake residents frustrated by SCE’s noisy helicopter flights required to operate local hydroelectric dams. On the flip side, residents are well accustomed to lodging such complaints.
“I feel like I am being treated as a third class citizen by SCE and I’m very unhappy about it,” a second resident whined.
Paruolo maintained SCE was continually investing in the community.
“Our system is overbuilt,” he asserted. “We use class two poles, which is above and beyond industry standards for this reason”
He was also quick to remind them that the only reason the June Lake Loop had any power during the event was because of the publicly contested hydroelectric dams.
But of the grievances, the residents’ chief complaint was the lack of communication from the company. Early in the outage, SCE informed the county that restoration might not be complete until Sunday, Dec. 28. Yet residents said they received little direct information about the extent of damage or why power remained out.
The Board commiserated, and stressed its own need for timely updates.
“We lean on you when it’s an SCE thing, but we’re leaned on constantly because people think that we have some inside track,” Supervisor John Peters said.
Paruolo acknowledged the challenges, but did not offer a solution.
“I will be frank with the board, I’m a bit at a loss as to what I could have said under the situation, that I didn’t say,” he said. “I came pretty darn close to the mark in terms of saying [what you are asking for]”
The back-and-forth between Paruolo and the pitch-forkers lasted about an hour and a half. In the end, he had plenty of notes to take back to his higher-ups and the residents left no richer.
