Swath of South Lake Tahoe without power

Update 9:40pm:

Liberty reports all the power is back on.

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Update 7:15pm:

Crews have restored power to 1,700 customers.

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A circuit was tripped in South Lake Tahoe, causing 3,845 customers to be without power on Saturday afternoon.

Power may not be restored until late June 24. Two Liberty Utilities crew members are trying to locate the problem.

“This is the season where we are bound to have longer outages because we have to make sure we don’t have any wires on the ground so we don’t start a fire,” Liberty spokesman Randy Kelly told Lake Tahoe News.

In wet weather a tripped circuit will automatically try to reconnect twice before linemen need to be called in. Often times it’s an animal that has caused the problem.

Customers near the Y, including the Tahoe Keys and Barton Memorial Hospital are without electricity. The hospital has generators to handle situations like this.

— Lake Tahoe News staff report