Edison complaint

The July power outage in Oak Park lasted over 2-and-a-half days for selected residents due to inadequate/defective transformer equipment maintained by Southern California Edison. As a result, many residents on several blocks lost all the contents of their refrigerators/freezers.

Edison representative Mr. Rudy Gonzalez, regional manager, directed we use the Edison claim form for lost food compensation when he visited with us on night three of the outage. This action was supported in the July MAC meeting at Oak Park High School. Linda Parks was in attendance.

I submitted the Edison form last month for a modest $152 compensation from Edison. It was just denied by the Edison Rosemead headquarters this week due to "under these circumstances, we must respectfully deny your claim." No other explanation.

Edison equipment malfunctioned in the July heat wave and caused residents' losses. The Edison repair people, with excellent response by day two after much prodding of Edison headquarters, admitted that underperforming transformers on our local streets caused the power loss.

Edison needs to immediately revisit this rejection of resident food loss claims and compensate us immediately. All of us need the support of this utility during this time of loss-especially those of us on retired income budgets. Richard Venn Oak Park