Worker blamed as 5 million lose power in Southwest

SAN DIEGO?? A power outage accidentally triggered by an Arizona utility company worker darkened a broad swath of the Southwest and Mexico on Thursday.

Nearly five million people lost electricity, bringing some San Diego freeways and airport traffic to near-standstills and leaving inland desert residents sweltering without air conditioners in the summer heat, officials said.

San Diego Gas & Electric Co. officials said the blackout occurred at about 4 p.m., taking out power to all 1.4 million of its household and business customers.

The outage extended into southern Orange County and across California's inland deserts as far east as Yuma, Ariz.

Officials told Reuters that many residents may be without power for a day or more.

In Mexico, officials said power was out in northern Baja California's two biggest cities, home to roughly 2.5 million people.

Two reactors at a nuclear power plant along the coast went offline after losing electricity, but officials said there was no danger to the public or workers.

Domino effect after 'human failure'
Officials blamed "human failure" for the outage, which was apparently linked to the actions of an employee at a substation in Arizona.

The source of the trouble was traced to an employee removing a piece of monitoring equipment, officials at Phoenix-based Arizona Public Service Co. (APS) said.

The ill-fated procedure first caused the failure of a high-power line supplying electricity to Southern California before unleashing a domino effect across the Southwest, officials said.

Why that mishap, which normally would have been isolated locally, triggered such a widespread outage was to be a focus of the probe, the officials said.

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breakingnews.com: Get the latest on the California power outage

There were reports of minor traffic accidents, but no major injuries reported connected with the outage. Officials in San Diego and elsewhere said they were on alert to respond to looting or other crimes.

Before midnight, power had been restored to some 720,000 users in the region, according to combined tallies provided by officials in Arizona, California and Mexico.

Yuma, and the surrounding area, was fully back after seeing power knocked out for 56,000 customers there.

"We have a ways to go but were starting to see a bit of progress right now," said Mike Niggli, chief operating officer of San Diego Gas & Electric Co.

Niggli said he expected a "very steady advance" in restoring power from around 2 a.m. through the middle of the afternoon Friday.

'Not a deliberate act'
He urged people to turn off their air conditioners and wait a bit once the electricity comes back on to avoid a surge and another outage.

"There's no doubt this has never happened before to our system," Niggli added.

Authorities quickly ruled out an intentional act or, in the anxious days leading up to the anniversary of Sept. 11 attacks, any suggestion of terrorism.

"This was not a deliberate act. The employee was just switching out a piece of equipment that was problematic," said Daniel Froetscher, an APS vice president.

"There appears to be two failures here ? one is human failure and the other is a system failure, Damon Gross, a spokesman for APS, told Reuters. "Both of those will be addressed."

It's possible that extreme heat in the region also may have caused some problems with the transmission lines, Niggli said.

Story: Texas sets record for hottest summer in US

California public health officials in Sacramento activated the state's Joint Emergency Operations Center to assess the impact.

The move alerts government agencies and other entities to report any medical or public health effects, starts efforts to assess the impact on hospitals and nursing homes and on the public drinking water and regulated food industries.

San Diego appeared to bear the brunt of the problems and as night fell much of the nation's eighth-largest city was in darkness, and all outgoing flights grounded at its main airport, Lindbergh Field.

During rush hour with few working stoplights, the outage caused mayhem on streets.

Leah Walden, 59, said she saw about five fender benders on her drive from her accounting job in suburban Spring Valley to a wedding-cake tasting in San Diego.

"People are irritated. They don't want to wait," said Walden, adding that about 15 cars went into reverse on a freeway veering out of the way of oncoming traffic to escape traffic jams. "That's how nuts people are."

Police stations were forced to use generators to accept emergency calls across the area. But there were no signs of widespread looting or other unrest related to the outage. Gas stations were shuttered and most shops and restaurants shut down.

'Surreal ... friendly'
After the sun went down, residents poured into the few bars that remained open in downtown San Diego, some donning reading lights on their heads like miners. A pair of men carried flaming tiki torches ? usually planted in backyards ? to see their way down the pitch black street.

"It's surreal," said Myrna Contreras, 35, sitting in the patio of a candlelit bar. "It's upbeat. It's friendly."

About 70 people had to be rescued by the city's fire department from stalled elevators.

San Diego schools were ordered closed until Monday as utilities could not guarantee they would be able to turn on the lights in classrooms.

Stuck without refrigeration, employees at the Cardiff Seaside Market, a grocery and specialty food store in Cardiff-by-the-Sea, north of San Diego, started grilling their inventory of fresh steaks and tuna in the parking lot and selling it cooked to passersby for cash.

In the beach town of Encinitas north of San Diego, Tim Grenda, 41, put a positive spin on it, pointing out that his hot yoga class was cooler because of the outage.

The class, usually performed at 104 degrees, was closer to 99 degrees because a furnace used to pump in heat had been knocked out.

"It was hot enough for me, but it wasn't quite as intense as the usual practice," he said.

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Rosa Maria Gonzales, a spokeswoman with the Imperial Irrigation District in California's sizzling eastern desert, was less enthusiastic ? temperatures were well into triple-digit territory when the power went out.

"It feels like you're in an oven and you can't escape," she said.

Jason Shafer, 29, said it was hot and uncomfortable in Palm Desert, and he didn't think things were going to get much better as the night went on.

"It's hard to sleep in anything above 80 degrees inside the house," he said. "I'm hoping they're going to get it fixed by bedtime."

Shafer said he and his wife would try to find a friend's house they can stay for the night, and if not, they might end up sleeping on the tile floor.

"We'll strip down to our skivvies and make the best of it," he said.

The blackout extended south of the border to Tijuana, Mexicali and other cities in Mexico's Baja California state, which are connected to the U.S. power grid, Niggli said. Police on both sides sent in reinforcements to prevent looting and other crime in their cities, but none was reported.

In Tijuana, people wandered out of their hot homes into the street to cool off while restaurants scrambled for ice to save perishable food.

Trains stopped
A backup system allowed officials to continue operating crossings from Arizona to California, said Customs and Border Protection spokeswoman Jackie Wasiluk.

Aside from clogged freeways, San Diego commuters also had to deal with the shutdown of the trolley system that shuttles thousands of commuters every day. Trains were stopped in Los Angeles, an Amtrak spokesman said, because there was no power to run the lights, gates, bells and traffic control signals.

The two reactors at the San Onofre nuclear power plant went offline at 3:38 p.m. as they are programmed to do when there is a disturbance in the power grid, said Charles Coleman, a spokesman from Southern California Edison. He said there was no danger to the public or to workers there.

The outage came more than eight years after a more severe black out in 2003 darkened a large swath of the Northeast and Midwest. More than 50 million people were affected in that outage.

In 2001, California's failed experiment with energy deregulation was widely blamed for six days of rolling blackouts that cut power to more than 3 million customers and shut down refrigerators, ATMs and traffic signals.

NBC News, msnbc.com staff, The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44449688/ns/us_news-life/

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