Error in Paperwork Led to Massive L.A. Power Outage

An inaccurate work order led a crew to cut the lines that caused Monday’s power outage to 2 million people in Los Angeles, the city’s Department of Water and Power has determined.

“It was a case of miscommunication,” Henry Martinez, an assistant general manager for the DWP, said Thursday.

DWP engineers who planned the replacement of a control system at a Toluca Lake receiving station specified that a bundle of three charged lines should be left intact, but work drawings handed to the crew called for the lines to be cut and removed, Martinez said.

The wire cutters used by the work crew closed a circuit between two live wires, triggering circuit breakers that shut down the receiving station and began the power outage, he said.

The agency is still trying to determine who drafted the work drawings that differed from the engineers’ plans.

City Councilman Tony Cardenas said the problem could have been avoided if engineers had double-checked the work drawings before they were forwarded to the crew.

“The bottom line is what are they doing to minimize these incidents,” said Cardenas, who chairs the council committee that oversees the DWP.

The work crew was replacing a manual control system with an automated system and had been involved in 39 similar replacement projects at other DWP facilities before Monday’s accident.

Martinez also confirmed that the power outage had damaged some DWP facilities, even though the shutdown of the system was designed to protect the sites.

He estimated the cost of repairs would be in the thousands of dollars. DWP General Manager Ron Deaton told the City Council on Tuesday that power was restored to nearly all customers within an hour and a half, but that he was perplexed that such an accident would affect so many customers. He said he would work on finding a fix to limit future outages.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has given Deaton a week to report on how to avoid another outage.