No one knows why yet why it happened, but it’s really big:
(CNN) — Authorities were investigating a power blackout in parts of southern California, Arizona and Mexico on Thursday that left more than 1 million customers without power and caused widespread traffic jams.
San Diego Gas & Electric said all of its 1.4 million customers were without power. The problem appeared to have originated in Arizona, the utility said.“This caused our line from AZ and from the north of our region to both trip off,” the utility posted on its Twitter account.
“Think of the system as linked by springs, when one part goes out the rest are affected,” another Twitter post from the utility said.
Power outages in California stretched from San Clemente to the state’s border with Mexico on Thursday, a San Diego County spokesman said. In Arizona, about 56,000 customers in Yuma lost power, Arizona Power and Supply said.
Parts of Mexico’s Baja California and Sonora states were also without power, Mexican authorities said.
And I was in Yuma yesterday…
NPR report: Human error caused substation power outage, BUT the fail safe system, which was supposed to ensure the outage would not spread, did now function. Or didn’t function effectively.
So, a human error has exposed a major sytemic problem.