Blackout Paralyzes Capital During Rush Hour

A blackout paralyzed a large section of the capital for more than two hours Monday afternoon, trapping people in elevators and behind electronic security doors and snarling rush-hour traffic.

Fire and transportation officials said they had received reports of people stranded in elevators throughout the city. Fire Department officials said they responded to about 80 such cases.

At the U.S. Trade Representative’s office, security doors stopped working when the electricity went off and workers were temporarily trapped inside.

“We’re using candlelight and matches over here,” Victoria Clark said over the only working telephone in the building.

A spokesman for the region’s Metro subway system said people were stranded in elevators at the Archives station and the Smithsonian subway stop. They were freed within half an hour.

In all, three subway stations were blacked out, although the trains continued to run, the official said.

George Washington University Hospital downtown was without power temporarily--until emergency generators could be started.

Eugene Brim, head of security, said the hospital only had one elevator working and staffers were passing meals to patients by forming a human chain up the stairways.

Few government departments were seriously affected because of the late hour.

Many government offices sent workers home when the power failed at 5:10 p.m., but without traffic lights, commuters found rush-hour traffic badly snarled.

Some grabbed flashlights and stood in intersections to direct traffic while frustrated motorists leaned on their horns. Police used flares to direct traffic at some intersections, and some people walked home carrying flashlights.

The outage was spotty. The Supreme Court, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Justice Department were affected but the White House, the Pentagon and Capitol Hill were not.

The SEC building was evacuated when an emergency generator failed to start.

The Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial were closed to tourists when their lights went out, but the Jefferson Memorial was unaffected.

Potomac Electric Power Co. spokeswoman Nancy Moses said the failure was in a 230-kilovolt line somewhere between the utility’s Potomac River generating station in Alexandria, Va., and the District of Columbia. The 480-megawatt generating station also failed, she said, and the cause was not known. The outage began about 5:10 p.m. and all power was restored by 7:45 p.m.

The utility also received reports of manhole fires.

John Kwitkoski, a businessman who works in a downtown building, stood in the middle of a heavily traveled downtown artery, K Street, directing traffic.

“Someone had to do it,” said Kwitkoski, dressed in a suit and waving a flashlight he had bought at the Radio Shack on the corner. “It’s a mess.”

J. L. O’Neil, a battalion fire chief, said that the outage caused a fire in electric cables under the streets near Chinatown.

He said the tunnels under 6th Street were “clogged with smoke,” forcing firefighters to go several blocks away to fight the blaze and prevent it from spreading.