Power To the People
A gaffe by an electrical worker left more than 2 million people in Los Angeles without power on Sept. 12. The midday power outage affected thousands of businesses, from the Fashion District to the San Fernando Valley, which were in the dark for about 90 minutes. Traffic lights stopped working, causing major traffic jams, and fire trucks raced through the downtown area as firefighters worked to free people stuck in elevators. A worker at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power accidentally cut through wires while installing a monitoring system at an electrical transmitting station in Toluca Lake. Days later, three local refineries affected by the power blackout were struggling to restore normal gas production to avoid a spike in gas prices.
