Shortly before 1 p.m. Pacific time today, mysterious power outages hit Los Angles, leaving an undetermined number of homes and business in the downtown area, as well as the San Fernando Valley (this blogger's birthplace, go Valley!) and Hollywood. Other parts of the metropolitan area were unaffected.
According to Bloomberg, the cause is as yet undetermined: The blackout started when something shorted out a transmission line near the Adelanto substation near Burbank.
The outage comes only a day after a purported al Qaeda video aired on ABC threatened terrorist attacks on Los Angeles, as well Melbourne, Australia, but officials have been quick to state that there appears to be no link with the video and the mystery blackout in Los Angeles.
LA is no stranger to blackouts, however; in 2001, widespread failures plagued the area for nearly a week. At that time, there simply were not enough resources to supply the Los Angeles area with sufficient power, but there appeared to be no extenuating circumstances to cause such an effect today.
UPDATE: The New York Times is now reporting that a utility working accidentally cut a cable, thus causing the blackout. Must have been one hefty cable.
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Article comments
1 - DrPat
Why do I get the image of a fried and smoking fellow in a hard hat, twitching his way away from the severed cable?
2 - LegendaryMonkey
As horrifically amusing as that may be, I bet we'd have heard the story sooner were that the case!
3 - LegendaryMonkey
Errr... the evil double comment! Damn you, BC, and your timing out on me!
4 - Justene
He "disconnected" the wrong cable and tried to reconnect it to a different wrong cable. Apparently there's a tripwire effect which cascaded across the system.
I got to walk down 33 flights of stairs.
5 - DrPat
This poor guy may not have been fried, but I'll bet he's fired...
Schmuck.
6 - LegendaryMonkey
That's a lot of stairs.
7 - Victor Lana
I just saw a newsflash that Tom Cruise, celebrating his love for Katie Holmes, was jumping up and down so vociferously that he severed a cable in LA. Amazingly, the high voltage did nothing to slow him down, though his braces are still sparking.
8 - Victor Plenty
Cruise was doing a publicity stunt for Spielberg's upcoming remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still, which will also star Katie Holmes in the role of the newly "re-visioned" killer robot Gort.
Where the original film made Gort out as a nearly featureless giant metal automaton, the remake will feature Gortrix, an extremely female robot who favors skimpy leather outfits.
Cruise will of course play Klaatu, the alien emissary who proves his advanced intellect by displaying a severely limited emotional range.
9 - Victor Lana
Victor,
Klaatu, barata nikto!
10 - DrPat
[envisioning Gortrix] Oh, yeah, and instead of the robot's visor slowly opening upon delivery of the command, Gortrix'... will open, revealing hot... and melting all the soldiers'...
11 - Eric Berlin
This outage must have just missed my place -- heard it hit Glendale and Burbank. Power was up in running at the Southern Fortress in Pasadena all day...
Heard the news on the road, actually, and was glad I made it to the freeway with traffic lights up and running.
12 - LegendaryMonkey
Yay for Pasedena! (sorry, lived there too, just gotta give my shout outs or whatever)
I have to ask... those of you who were there, were your drawers a little damp? Anyone worried? Or just business as usual?
13 - bo~bo da clown
i just wanted to say.. GOD BLESS AMERICA!! rock on wit yo bad self
14 - Anthony Grande
Do you liberals know that your cronies here in California blamed this whole thing on the Governator??????