Utility worker mistake cuts power to 5 million in Southwest, Mexico

SAN DIEGO — A power outage accidentally triggered by an Arizona utility company worker darkened a broad swath of the Southwest and Mexico on Thursday, cutting power to millions of people, 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.

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.

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, but no major problems had arisen as of late Thursday night.

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. 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.

Officials at Phoenix-based Arizona Public Service Co. said the source of the trouble could be traced to an employee removing a piece of monitoring equipment at a power substation in southwest Arizona. Why that mishap, which normally would have been isolated locally, triggered such a widespread outage was to be a focus of the probe, they said.

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.

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.

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."

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.

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 re-enforcements 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.

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

The outage stretched across a region that's home to some 6 million people, though it was impossible to say exactly how many had lost power at the peak of the outage.

Niggli said that the all 1.4 million of the San Diego utility's business and household customers were affected. When asked how many people that represented, he pointed out the population of San Diego County is roughly 3 million and the power was knocked out for most of the county. He also said that in areas of Orange County and in outlying desert areas, several hundred thousand people were affected.

Officials said power was knocked out in Baja California's two largest cities, Mexicali and Tijuana, which have a combined population of 2.5 million people.

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.