San Diego

A crane operated by a private contractor at a construction site in the 1300 block of 27th Street knocked down two San Diego Gas & Electric power lines Friday, leaving 5,600 customers on Otay Mesa without power for nearly three hours, the utility reported.

A separate outage in the Mt. Soledad area of La Jolla, temporarily shut down television stations KFMB and KGTV and radio stations KCBQ, KYXY and KFMB, said SDG&E; spokesman David Kusumoto.

The Otay Mesa outage, which began at 11:24 a.m., affected customers in the area of Hollister Street, north of Otay River Road and west of 17th Street, and Beyer Boulevard between Main Street and the Tijuana River, Kusumoto said. Power was restored to all customers at 2:34 p.m., he added.

He said a crane, operated by an unidentified private contractor, struck two power lines and a power pole.

The Mt. Soledad outage affected 1,600 customers from 1:19 p.m. to 2:23 p.m., when all power was restored. The cause of that outage could not be immediately determined. It affected customers living south of Van Nuys Street, between Cardeno Drive and La Jolla Scenic Drive.