Blackout puts S.F. in the dark

Blackout puts S.F. in the dark

A massive San Francisco power outage on one of the busiest shopping days of the year turned the normal chaos of the Saturday before Christmas into surreal confusion -- disrupting traffic, shutting down two transit stations and disorienting thousands of suburbanites who visit the city only a few times a year.

The outage began at a major PG&E substation at Eighth and Mission streets shortly before 6 p.m. after a fire broke out on the second floor. When firefighters arrived, they found two transformers smoldering and thick smoke filling the building....

Looks like PG&E has a hidden problem. They better find it and fix it.

/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/twakfl.gif

i read through that entire artical trying to find a reference to sure fire /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/twakfl.gif

is it too hard to type out san francisco? /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/tongue.gif

I was caught in a movie theater when it hit. (missed the last 5 minutes of Return of the King! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/mad.gif) A lot of places have emergency power so it wasn't too bad getting around the city last night. Luckily, I had my Arc AAA on my keychain to make my way through some pitch black hallways and my E1e/KL1 when I needed a little more light. I was surprised how much light a 1W LED puts out when there isn't any other ambient light around. I only wish I had my L4 with me to see how it would light up a dark city street! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

...What a mess...BART wasn't stopping at the Downtown stations, most of Downtown, South of Market area was black. That part of town is all flat 4-lane one-way streets, and people like to speeeeed...When they hit intersections w/out traffic signals, nasty traffic accidents happen (because most drivers don't know to treat an intersection as a 4-way stop when the traffic signal lights aren't working).

Anyways...

--dan

Power was still out this late morning/noon downtown, in the New Montgomery & Market intersection.

Idiots, just like those described by dano were blowing through the intersections rather than treating them like 4-way stops. Pedestrians, mostly shoppers,were also annoyingling treating the area as one big sidewalk, rather than extending any courtesy to permit cars to drive-through.

Outages like this can be a real hassle. I think I will take my X5T with me to the theater, unscrewed to lockout position in my vest pocket (just in case).