How widespread is the power outage in the SouthWest? LA Times article I know my home is in the dark (candlepower and flashlights only), but fortunately, I'm not there. Apparently, from what I hear, it's a cascade failure starting in AZ.

I'm in south Orange County but luckily I'm just north of the blacked out region. There are blacked out neighborhoods in my city and in adjacent cities, and there were a number of news helicopters hovering overhead yesterday evening. ("Look, folks, blackness below...") I haven't talked to anyone about their commute home, but it must've been a royal pain for many. It's boring to watch helicopter shots on TV of gridlocked traffic. I much prefer our high speed car chases.

My friend took a long weekend to Palm Springs yesterday and apparently they were without power, too. Whew, Palm Springs with no AC? Miserable.

Early this morning, I happened to be listening to a San Diego AM station and they mentioned that a number of SD cities were under "boil water" orders, although the announcer made it seem like it was unconfirmed info. Cities like La Jolla, Scripps Ranch, Otay Mesa, and a number of others. I'm sure folks in upscale La Jolla are not accustomed to their tap water being suspect--and only half a day after the power goes out.

I was just talking to someone and he said his home in Rancho Santa Margarita was without power. Took him 4 hours to drive home yesterday.

That's the furthest city north I have heard of with power outages yesterday.

Although the power seems to be back on for most folks, the reactors at San Onofre nuclear power plant are still offline. I don't know if there's enough spare capacity to get through the day without those reactors online, and inspecting a nuke plant whenever they trip off usually takes time. Since we've been having a bit of a heat wave this week, there's going to be a lot of demand for power.

CNN story of recovery

Perhaps the outage mystery is to do with the experiment.

AFLM, it was the result of one of the substations out in Yuma, AZ shutting down, which transferred to load to the next power station. It promptly overloaded and shut down, which transferred the load father down the line shutting down distribution and power generation stations like a string of firecrackers. It's the same thing that caused the 2003 blackout of the NE United States.

The total area affected were:
Yuma, AZ (partial shutdown)
San Diego county
Riverside county
Orange county (partial shutdown)
Tijuana, Baja Mexico (???)

I got caught in it and was lucky in that I was able to stay at work and missed most of the traffic.

Lessons learned:
The following utilities went along electricity
*Cash (ATMs)
*No gasoline (Pumps inoperable)
*No credit card transactions unless store has backup generator.
*Severe water restrictions (pump stations operating a reduced capacity. Areas higher than the reservoirs were in trouble)
*Boil water order (Water filtration facilities at reduced capacity or inoperable)
*Cordless phones (exacerbated below problem)
*Cell phone network (Surprisingly the network stayed up, but it was so overloaded that only text messages went through reliably)
*Local radio stations (One emergency station, AM 600 KOGO, stayed up)
*Trolley (operates off of grid)
*Traffic control (No working traffic lights, and everybody left about the same time)

Panic buying of the following items:
*Dry ice (sold out in first hour)
*Batteries
*Bottled water (was 100F earlier in the day).

Things we did right:
*Generous supply of candles. Only had to use flashlights if out of the main room. IMHO 6 candles are enough light to have dinner by and still read.
*Battery powered radio. (+)Helped keep us abreast of developments. (-)The blame game started only 5 hours in cutting into useful information.
*Flashlights, spare batteries, and bottled water already in kit.
*Both cars had plenty of gas (I maintain a 1/2 tank minimum in hot weather due to brushfire evacuation panic buying of gasoline)

Things to add to kit.
*Candle lanterns (area lighting was a problem and 1 candle = approx 1 min-maglite)
*Extra cash

Good point about the ATMs not working. Would you know by chance if the archaic technique used in the past - entering the bank, walking up the teller's window, and manually withdrawing money from an account would have worked? Hopefully some banks would have backup power for their computers....

I agree with you completely about keeping the gas tank full and keeping a cash stash for these events.

Hikermor, call your bank Monday and ask. I'm going to!

I'm suspecting that since everything is computerized, we might be out of luck. They probably just lock the doors, as the lack of power probably affects their security systems.

Sue

It's very common for all the account management systems to be held in secure datacenters and not on the premises. Power outages frequently affect the WAN connections needed for these systems.

Mark_R.... don't know about your opinion of kerosene lanterns, but I get good service out of my Dietz Air Pilot lantern ...it comes with one of the larger founts...I have a Little Wizard that has a longer burn time, but produces less light due to wick width....1-K Kerosene is about $10 a gallon if you can't find a bulk source...got mine at W.T. Kirkman Co.