by the Associated Press
Technicians were still baffled how an unremarkable local event — a utility worker’s removal of a faulty, voltage-regulating capacitor in Yuma, Ariz. — could trigger a cascade of outages from western Arizona, across a swath of Southern California and down into Baja Mexico. “The way the system is designed, that should have had no impact on any customer, in Yuma or anywhere else,” said Damon Gross, a spokesman for Arizona Public Service Co., the utility whose worker set off the blackout. The blackout left more than 4million people without power for up to 12 hours, including about 135,000 customers of the Imperial Irrigation District. In the San Diego area, it caused business losses estimated at more than $100 million.
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