Thousands of inmates at an overpopulated California state prison without power

(FOX40.COM) — Thousands of inmates and staff workers at California State Prison Solano are without electricity after an outage early Sunday.

“California State Prison, Solano (SOL) is actively working to repair a power outage that occurred following a major outage in the city of Vacaville on July 14, 2024,” the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said in a statement to FOX40.com on Monday.

The power outage started around 3 a.m. on Sunday, according to the Pacific Gas & Electric Company outage map. Since then, power was restored to everywhere else in Vacaville except the prison. A statement from CDCR said it is working with PG&E to fix the issue, however, the electric company claimed otherwise. PG&E reported the outage is related to the facility and not their service. So far, the outage is ongoing nearly three days later.

Solano Prison is one of the most overpopulated facilities in the state. A population report from CDCR shows as of June 2024, the prison holds 3,986 inmates, 153% of its capacity. The outage comes amid triple-digit weather temperatures.

“The health and safety of all individuals living and working within our institution and in our community are our top priorities,” CDCR said. “This outage does not compromise security at SOL, and we are working to promptly address the needs of our population.”

CDCR reported that ice water is available and cooling fans are “operating in most areas.” Several people have called FOX40 and claimed that there is no running water and that fans are mainly in officer-centric areas.

“SOL is operating on emergency generator power in most of the institution and the prison is ensuring that appropriate access to medical and mental health care is maintained,” CDCR said.

Power was reportedly restored around 2 p.m., but went out again 15 minutes later. As of 6 p.m. on Tuesday, there is no estimated time of restoration.

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