SAN DIEGO?? Power companies in Southern California restored electricity to most customers by early Friday after a massive blackout on Thursday left nearly 5 million people in parts of California, Arizona and Mexico in the dark.
Although the outage, apparently caused by a mistake by a single worker, was just a tenth the size of the 2003 blackout that left about 50 million people without power in the eastern United States and Canada, it will surely rank as one of the biggest blackouts in recent history, certainly one of the biggest caused by human error.
Sempra Energy's San Diego Gas & Electric power company said it restored power to its 1.4 million customers at 3:25 a.m. Western time Friday.
That was almost 12 hours after a major electric transmission system outage in western Arizona and the loss of a key connection with the 2,150-megawatt San Onofre nuclear power plant in California resulted in the most widespread power outage in the company's history, SDG&E said.
Blackouts also affected 3.5 million people in Baja California, according to local officials.
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Power grid still 'very fragile'
San Onofre, which is operated by Edison International's Southern California Edison, shut on Thursday and remained out of service early Friday, according to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
"Restoring power in the aftermath of the loss of the entire local grid serving San Diego and southern Orange counties was a monumental task," David Geier, SDG&E vice president of electric operations, said in a release.
"The restoration process, however, has left our local power grid very fragile and we are asking our customers to conserve electricity throughout the day Friday," Geier said.
SDG&E and the California ISO, which operates the power grid for much of the state, said they would focus on maintaining and ensuring the integrity of the local power system for the next few days before determining the sequence of events that led to the outage and establishing practices and procedures to ensure that outages such as the Sept. 8 event are not repeated.
"There appears to be two failures here ? one is human failure and the other is a system failure. Both of those will be addressed," said Damon Gross, a spokesman for Pinnacle West Capital's Arizona utility Arizona Public Service.
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While the restoration of power in San Diego signaled that the blackout was essentially over, the electrical system was deemed fragile and people were urged to go easy on air conditioning, while San Diego schools and beaches remained closed.
The outage occurred at 4 p.m. Thursday after an electrical worker removed a piece of monitoring equipment at a power substation in southwest Arizona, officials at Phoenix-based Arizona Public Service Co. said.
It was unclear why that mishap, which normally would have been isolated locally, sparked such a widespread outage. The company said that would be the focus of a probe.
The blackout also caused a 3.2-million sewage spill that closed miles of San Diego-area beaches.
All public schools in the city as well as state universities and community colleges were closed Friday.
During the night, all outgoing flights were grounded at San Diego's main airport, Lindbergh Field. The airfield was open and had power Friday morning but authorities said some airlines may have cancelled individual flights. Some San Diego freeway traffic was also affected during the outage.
Emergency center activated
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.
The area affected by the power cut is home to about 6 million people, but it was unclear exactly how many were hit.
The California Independent System Operator declared a statewide conservation effort to ease the strain on the power grid.
"The restoration process, however, has left our local power grid very fragile and we are asking our customers to conserve electricity throughout the day Friday," said David Geier, a San Diego Gas & Electric vice president.
In the border city of Tijuana, people formed long lines outside convenience stores Thursday, trying to buy ice or beer that was being sold at half price. Many people were drinking that beer on the streets or in parked cars with speakers booming loud music.
Cars also formed snaking lines at the few gas stations with generators that remained open and Traffic snarled street after traffic lights stopped working.
Jose Padilla Flores, who was one of the few people who still had electricity Thursday, was offering to let people watch the telenovela on his television if they bought fried tacos and flavored water from his small restaurant "El Dorado" in the Independencia neighborhood.
"My female neighbors were the first ones to ask if I could let them watch the telenovela," said Padilla Flores, 35. "I thought that was a great idea to promote my business."
San Diego residents poured into the few bars that remained open downtown after dark, some donning reading lights on their heads like miners.
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'Surreal ... friendly'
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."
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.
It's possible that extreme heat in the region also may have caused some problems with the transmission lines, Niggli said.
There were no immediate reports of major injuries connected with the outage. Officials in San Diego and elsewhere said they were on alert but no major problems had arisen, including any signs of looting or other unrest.
San Diego police Lt. Andra Brown said an emergency command post is open and more officers remained on duty.
"We understand there are going to be criminals who are going to take advantage of the situation," Brown said. "But people also know that the phones work and when they call San Diego police, they are going to respond."
Police on both sides of the border sent in reinforcements to prevent looting and other crime in their cities, but none was reported.
'People are irritated'
However, there were reports of minor traffic accidents as the outage caused mayhem on the streets without stoplights during rush hour.
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."
Rosa Maria Gonzales, a spokeswoman with the Imperial Irrigation District in California's sizzling eastern desert, experienced temperatures 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.
Tijuana, Mexicali and other cities in Mexico's Baja California state are connected to the U.S. power grid, Niggli said.
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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