Major Power Outage
On September 8, 2011 there was a widespread power outage affecting a region spreading west from Yuma, Arizona, to San Diego, California, and affecting parts of Northern Mexico. The outage was the result of 23 events that occurred on five power grids in a span of 11 minutes including the APS North Gila Substation. Federal, regional and local officials are investigating what happened and why the outage cascaded the way it did. Most of the areas affected were served by San Diego Gas & Electric, which saw its entire service area lose power.
The outage appears to have been caused by the actions of an APS employee in the North Gila substation, and it is unknown why safeguards did not keep the outage limited to the Yuma area.
The outage occurred days before the tenth anniversary of the September 11 attacks, and hours before the United States Department of Homeland Security warned of a potential terrorist attack leading up to the anniversary, but the Federal Bureau of Investigation and SDG&E early in their investigations ruled out terrorism.
Read more about this topic: Arizona Public Service
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