A tree went into a South Lake Tahoe house on Dec. 16. Photo/SLTFD

Thousands of customers on both sides of the state line are without power on the South Shore, along with residents in Carson City.

It meant eating by phone flashlight for some people at Freshies in South Lake Tahoe when the lights went out just before 9pm Dec. 16.

Initially, NV Energy reported 8,363 customers without power when the incident occurred at 8:45pm. Fifteen minutes later that number was 4,468.

Kristen Saibini, with NV Energy, as of 9:40pm Saturday told Lake Tahoe News she didn’t know what caused the outage. Still, the company is expecting power to be back by midnight.

Liberty Utilities, which gets much of its power from NV, is saying it could be 8am Sunday before power is restored. No one from that company was available for comment.

Wind has been an issue Saturday evening. A tree fell onto a house on June Way in South Lake Tahoe. Damage was minimal.

Firefighters were called out to Ironwood Cinema in Minden for reports of smoke. No fire was reported.

In South Lake, two people had to be rescued from a elevator at the Tahoe Beach Retreat when the power went out.

— Lake Tahoe News staff report