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View Full Version : Blackout Hits L.A.; Terrorism Ruled Out -- SFGate/AP, 2005-09-12



Andrew
09-12-2005, 01:56 PM
Blackout Hits L.A.; Terrorism Ruled Out (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2005/09/12/national/a142235D97.DTL) -- SFGate/AP, 2005-09-12

A blackout hit major portions of the Los Angeles area Monday afternoon, snarling traffic at intersections and trapping people in elevators.

The city was investigating the cause of the outage. But Sgt. Catherine Plows, a police spokeswoman, said terrorism was not suspected.

The electricity went out shortly before 1 p.m., and scattered outages were reported from downtown to the Pacific Coast and north into the San Fernando Valley, an area encompassing hundreds of thousands of residents and thousands of businesses.

Editor's note: Disney's reservation call center (located in Anaheim) is apparently affected by the blackout.

Skunker
09-12-2005, 02:06 PM
Yikes...I would assume that DL has backup generators in order to safely get guests off/out of rides if the power went out?

SassyNYLady
09-12-2005, 02:08 PM
I am in West Hollywood, and the blackout lasted about 30 seconds for us...

Quite coincidental that this should happen the day after the Al-Qaeda operative made his statement about LA...but it's not terrorism. Burbank's still out pretty much, so I would expect that there are some issues going on with Disney.

DaddyB
09-12-2005, 02:27 PM
Disneyland does indeed have their own power... but besides that, Disneyland is in Orange County, not L.A., so I doubt the outage affected them.

tod
09-12-2005, 02:31 PM
I am in West Hollywood, and the blackout lasted about 30 seconds for us...

On the cusp of West Hollywood (I can see the Beverly Center from my office window) and same here.

--t

matt5172
09-12-2005, 02:39 PM
I'm in Burbank, it lasted a little over an hour for us at my HS

hlbtimes2
09-12-2005, 02:40 PM
They are reporting it as "human error". Apparently some utility workers working on something else disconected some wires.

The Lovely Mrs. tod
09-12-2005, 02:46 PM
We went down in North Hollywood about 12:30, it was around 2pm when we got it back.

The Little tods report power went out at Burbank High, (which really surprised me as Burbank has it's own power dept) and the electric clocks at home are all about 90 minutes slow.

-TLMt

DisneyDustin22
09-12-2005, 02:50 PM
Jack Bauer and Tony Almeda on on it! :cool:

matt5172
09-12-2005, 02:51 PM
(which really surprised me as Burbank has it's own power dept)


Ya, that's what I thought about Burbank too. Apparently only some of the power went out at Burroughs HS in Burbank. My 5th period did not have power but some of the lights in my 6th period did, and only half the streetlights were out when I was driving home

cstephens
09-12-2005, 04:12 PM
I work in Century City, and our power went out for about 40 minutes starting at about 1pm.

They have figured out the reason for the outage (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050912/ap_on_re_us/la_power_outage).

Osky
09-12-2005, 04:33 PM
Even if a local area has their own power department, they are still connected into the grid, and are subject to mistakes made by other companies on the grid. Turns out some workers conected the wrong wires and tried to send too much power down a transmission line. This, in turn, caused the safety equipment to shut down those lines.

The Lovely Mrs. tod
09-12-2005, 06:24 PM
Even if a local area has their own power department, they are still connected into the grid, and are subject to mistakes made by other companies on the grid. Turns out some workers conected the wrong wires and tried to send too much power down a transmission line. This, in turn, caused the safety equipment to shut down those lines.
We know. ;)

-TLMt

h_lehmann
09-12-2005, 07:40 PM
Near the Van Nuys Airport, it never went out at all.

pisces
09-12-2005, 07:43 PM
Even if a local area has their own power department, they are still connected into the grid, and are subject to mistakes made by other companies on the grid. Turns out some workers conected the wrong wires and tried to send too much power down a transmission line. This, in turn, caused the safety equipment to shut down those lines.


Don't give the Terrorists any ideas.

Hard to believe it's that easy to cut the power for a major metropolis.

---And water too.... DWP controls it all.

The LAPD declared a full-on City Emergency.

I'm waiting for FEMA to arrive.

JeffG
09-12-2005, 09:11 PM
I needed to run home at lunch hour today to pick something up that I had left at home. I live in Van Nuys and work in North Hollywood and it normally takes me 20-40 minutes, depending on traffic. The black-out hit shortly before I got home. I was stopped at a stoplight and all of a sudden the light went out. For a few moments, nobody really knew what to do, basically being unsure whether the light was out on all sides. Eventually, people cautiously went through the intersection.

Figuring that the problem was probably pretty isolated, I went ahead and just ran into home to pick up what I needed and headed back to work, assuming I would quickly drive out of the affected area. It ended up taking me over 90 minutes to get back to work. Every stoplight was out except for about the last 3 or 4 before I got to the office. I think I only encountered two that had anyone directing traffic (they were right next to schools, so there were crossing guards). Most people did seem to know what to do at a dark stoplight, but there were enough that figured they could go any time they wanted to that it got pretty scary at times.

The most interesting part of the whole thing was listening to KNX radio while driving. The first report of the outage was just a quick note that there were some reported power outages in the middle of other reports. Then the station went off the air completely for several minutes, followed by a reporter tentatively stating the call letters and saying he wasn't sure if they were on the air. He briefly started reporting on what was going on, but stopped mid-sentence and said "Oh, we aren't on the air". I could then just hear him shuffling papers and talking quietly with co-workers for a minute or so until someone finally told him he actually was on the air after all.

The rest of the resort was actually really interesting, basically seat-of-the-pants journalism and was actually pretty fascinating to listen to. They had no wire services, no Internet and even the phones went out after a couple minutes. The information that they were providing mostly trickled in via cell phones (we got to hear most of the reporters' ring tones...) and through simple observation of what they could see out the windows. They eventually got quite a bit of their information by reaching people in unaffected areas via cell phone and then asking them to fill them in on what they were seeing on TV coverage. They also got a hold of some of their field reporters (and even one that was on his way home) via cell phone and were able to relay observations. They didn't have any way to put the people calling their cell phones on the air, so most of it was the reporters repeating what the callers were saying.

While I can't say that I at all enjoyed having to drive that long (for one thing, I was getting a splitting headache, which this evening I now realize appears to be the flu...), but I actually am kind of glad that I got to listen to this radio coverage. It isn't that often that we hear that kind of raw reporting anymore.

-Jeff

TowerofTerror
09-12-2005, 09:17 PM
Hits my dad work in downtown and it affect him for like an hour or so. My dad work at Parker Center and city hall east. this happened there at about 12:30pm or little after