Downtown Los
Angeles hit by major power outage
Oct 12, 2005 - Daily News, Los Angeles
Author(s): Rick Orlov
Oct. 12--A third major power outage in less than a month struck the
downtown Los Angeles area Tuesday, prompting renewed calls for an
explanation from Department of Water and Power officials.
The outage occurred at 9:34 a.m. and affected the Civic Center area
-- including City Hall and police headquarters at Parker Center.
Emergency generators restored power to some areas, although many offices
remained dark throughout the day.
DWP officials said they were trying to determine what caused the
outage and said the delay in restoring power was because individual
circuits had to be checked to determine the location of the problem.
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said he wanted a report from the utility
on the number of outages.
"The mayor is very concerned with the frequency and wants to know
what is going on with the system," spokesman Joe Ramallo said.
Councilman Tony Cardenas, who chairs the City Council's Commerce,
Energy and Natural Resources Committee -- which oversees the DWP --
questioned whether the most recent outage reflected a broader problem
with the city's power system.
"I want to know if this is just a rash of bad timing or if we have a
systemwide problem we need to look at," Cardenas said.
On Sept. 12, power to half of the city was lost for more than an hour
when live wires were cut by workers at the Toluca Lake station. Two
weeks later, there was another brief outage affecting the Burbank area
when crews dug up power lines.
For the Los Angeles City Council, Tuesday's blackout meant a return
to the old ways -- with no computers, vote machines or microphones.
The council's audio crew developed an emergency system using wireless
microphones hooked up to battery-powered speakers. All council votes
were tabulated by hand and records were kept on paper rather than
electronically.
It also meant the council's broadcast over Channel 35 was not live,
with crews from the city station taping the meeting for later broadcast.
"If this is just a series of coincidences and bad luck, that's one
thing," Cardenas said. "But, we need to look to see if there is a more
serious problem we should be addressing."
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