Downtown And Most Of LA Goes Dark!

Power just came back on downtown, but below is the AP wire report:


Large Portion of Los Angeles Loses PowerSep 12 4:40 PM US/Eastern

By LAURA WIDES Associated Press Writer

LOS ANGELES

A large portion of Los Angeles was hit with a blackout Monday afternoon. The city was investigating the cause and extent of the outage. But Sgt. Catherine Plows, a police spokeswoman, said terrorism was not suspected.

Electrical power was knocked out shortly before 1 p.m. after two power surges, and traffic was snarled at intersections throughout the city when stop lights went dark. The lights also went out at downtown high- rises.

The Police Department went on "full tactical alert," meaning no officers were allowed to leave duty.

The blackout came a day after ABC aired a videotape of a purported al- Qaida member making terrorist threats against Los Angeles and Melbourne, Australia, on the fourth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Heavy usage on hot days can lead to blackouts. But the weather in Los Angeles was not unsually hot Monday.