Yesterday a power outage at the Port of Long Beach left hundreds of truck drivers stuck in gridlocked traffic outside of the facility for hours, unable to move and frustrated by the Port Authority’s lack of communication.
The port facility lost power around 5:30 p.m. Early reports blamed the power outage on metallic balloons, but further investigation revealed that the balloons were actually to blame for a different power outage in Long Beach. The cause of the power outage remains under investigation.
Aerial video shows hundreds of trucks jammed at an entrance to the port. The truck drivers were forced to wait for hours with very little information from port officials, according to reports.
One truck driver who had been stuck at the port for eight hours vented his frustration to ABC7 News: “We’re trapped. Nobody in the terminal cares that we’re trapped. Very frustrating day. A wasted day.”
He noted “You can’t go right, you can’t go left, you can’t go forward, you can’t back up. My whole day was lost here. And I like I said, there’s no communication. I could have done a lot better today and went to a different terminal.”