Lights go out . . .
Southern California Edison Regional Director Alis Clausen confirmed the Ridgecrest area was scheduled for rolling black outs starting around 3 p.m., and reports indicated the outages were in the area between Sanders and Norma streets, south of Drummond Avenue. City Council Member Chip Holloway, meanwhile, said he expected the Ridgecrest area, and California, to have 31 to 34 days of blackouts this summer. Holloway said he attended a California League of Economic Development conference where the energy crunch was a primary topic of discussion. Holloway said one of the local solutions to the energy crunch could be the formation of a utility district. A local utility would district purchase power for the local area while SCE would probably continue the customer billing.