What's taken Socal Edison so long to get the power back on?

A reasonable question. As of this afternoon, several thousand customers are still without electricity - five days after the big windstorm. What must be especially frustrating is that the utility keeps rolling back its estimate for getting everyone connected. In fairness to Edison, this was one bruiser of a storm, with wind gusts of almost 100 miles per hour and thousands of trees down. At one point, 419,000 San Gabriel Valley area customers were without power. It's taken time just getting to the downed lines and transformers. What L.A. County supervisors would like to know is whether Edison was adequately prepared. From the LAT:

Supervisor Don Knabe said Edison should work more closely with county officials in future disasters. Knabe suggested asking local police and sheriff's deputies to drive around affected neighborhoods and give residents updates by loudspeaker. "You just left a lot of folks hanging out there in that they didn't know what was going on," Knabe said, a situation that could've been alleviated with better communication with public officials. Instead, "now you've got a public relations nightmare." Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas said there was no question that the disaster was an "overwhelming set of circumstances," but told the Edison official that "now you are aware of the county's capacity. ... We can do a more comprehensive service" during future emergencies.

Supervisor Mike Antonovich was especially critical of how the utility communicated with customers who lost power. A spokeswoman for Edison said Edison was relying on media reports, but that would be of limited help if you don't have power.