Some interesting quotes from Slate: http://slatest.slate.com/posts/2011/09/09/california_blackout_utility_worker_s_error_in_yuma_leaves_san_di.html
QUOTE Much of Southern California and parts of Arizona and even Mexico came to a standstill Thursday, apparently thanks to a blunder by a single electrical worker in sandy Yuma, Arizona. Electricity officials blamed "operator error" for an enormous blackout that cast 4 million customers, including pretty much all of San Diego, into darkness beginning around 3:30 p.m. Thursday. Power came back on for many customers early Friday morning. In the meantime, streets were gridlocked, people were trapped in elevators, and flights from San Diego were canceled . . . Alarms shrieked, sewage pumps failed, nuclear plants in San Onofre shut down, and people were stuck on rides at Sea World and Legoland. Nice going, anonymous utility worker in Yuma. . . . Why it spread as far as San Diego is the subject of an investigation. It seems the outage caused a series of other sections of the grid to overload, and the blackout cascaded from one to the next. It’s worrisome, BusinessWeek notes, because it suggests the region’s power grid is more fragile than anyone realized.
