DWP Credits Night Shift With Saving L.A. From Blackout

As most Los Angeles residents slept early Wednesday, a mystery “event” caused the grid that supplies electricity to the Western states to fail, darkening all or parts of eight states and cutting electricity to as many as 2 million customers.

But quick action by four technicians at a generating station in Long Beach probably saved the Los Angeles area from a blackout, Department of Water and Power officials said.

Workers on the lobster shift at the Haynes Plant were able to keep the station working by manipulating fuel and steam flows by hand as alarms went off, officials said.

“It was a circus there for a while,” said plant superintendent Ken Bosworth. “The reactions of our people were as good as I’ve ever seen.”

The glitch in the system, which is still under investigation, occurred somewhere in Northern California in the Pacific Gas & Electric system at 12:26 a.m., plunging parts of Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, parts of Arizona and Northern California into darkness.

Southern California Edison customers were protected when generating units in Oxnard and Laughlin, Nev., tripped as a protective measure, a company spokeswoman said.

At the Haynes Plant, technicians in Control Room A saw wild swings on the plant’s megawatt recorder, which measures the power load in each generating unit.

“Everybody was kind of startled,” said supervisor Terry Campbell. “We knew right away we had an event.”

The disruption in the system caused one unit to shut down briefly. Another almost died, but operator Robert Pesqueira, using hand dials, was able to stabilize flows of fuel and steam. Meanwhile, operator John Loetterle refired the downed unit as Campbell and operator Mike McInnis monitored the control boards.

“It happened so fast, we were hardly out of our chairs and approaching the board before it was played out,” Campbell said.

Had the workers not acted as they did, Bosworth said, “there would have been hundreds of megawatts with no place to go.” The power buildup would have caused steam and fuel valves to close and turbines to stop, he said.

Campbell and the others were on duty Jan. 17 when the Northridge earthquake tripped off the power flow at the Haynes Plant. “We’re beginning to feel sort of snake bit,” he said.

Power was restored to almost all of the affected customers within 1 3/4 hours, said Dennis Eyre, executive director of the Western Systems Coordinating Council, representing the interconnected power companies. Late Wednesday, inspectors from Pacific Gas & Electric were investigating the cause of the event, he said.