Power line snafu knocks out electricity to scores in SoCal

Southern California Edison customers had a flashback yesterday as rolling blackouts his Southern California.

In one of the most severe electricity problems since the energy crisis, blackouts hit Southern California on Thursday after a major transmission line was knocked out, cutting power to roughly 700,000 homes.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, in a hastily arranged visit to the state's power grid operations center here, sought to assure residents that the transmission problem was an isolated glitch and that the state has enough power to get it through the summer.

"Something that could have been a crisis was avoided,'' he said. "... This was one of those unforeseen incidents.''

Some Democrats, however, quickly accused the governor of breaking his promise to keep the lights on and not doing enough to fix transmission problems or build new power plants.

Of course, it would have helped if those same Senate Democrats had passed the Governor's proposals which would have fixed those problems...