Outage Hits County Areas at Random

A major power outage Saturday afternoon left customers across Ventura County stranded electronically--on phones, computers and at ATM machines--and traffic creeping at some intersections.

Authorities say the intermittent disruption in electricity, which began about 3:45 p.m., may have been caused by a brush fire in Oregon that burned through a line that brings power from Oregon to California.

Scattered outages continued Saturday night, said Edison officials.

Street lights from Ventura to Simi Valley began flashing or went out altogether. ATM customers, along with those trying to pay for purchases with credit cards, were among those unable to carry out transactions as the outage made its way across the region.

At the same time, phone lines went dead, lights flickered and personal computer screens faded to black in residences, businesses and government offices.

In addition, police scanners were buzzing with reports of security alarms going off.

“Have we had a lot of calls? Yeah,” said a spokesman for Safeguard National Alarm Co.

The Ventura County Fire Department responded to two calls of fires in underground transformers--one in Moorpark and the other in Newbury Park--and the cover blew off one transformer in Simi Valley.

Emergency generators kicked on at local hospitals, and within minutes of the initial fluctuation, facilities were back to utility-supplied power.

Although Oxnard Airport was without runway lights, taxi lights and its rotating beacon for about two hours, flights were not affected, said tower supervisor Bob Cherry.

One of the harder-hit areas of the county appeared to be south of the Conejo Grade.

“In Newbury Park, where half of the people who work here live, the outage is really bad,” said Brenda Coleman, director of the Thousand Oaks Teen Center.

The city of Ventura seemed to have the fewest number of outage-related police calls.

“I expected a rash of them, but we didn’t get them,” said Ventura Police Lt. Brad Talbot.

The computer-aided dispatch system used by the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department went down for about 45 minutes, disrupting operations at the Moorpark station on Olsen Road.

“Our records section went out completely,” Sgt. Claude Robillard said. The problem would have to be straightened out by the staff at the County Government Center in Ventura, he said.

The outage did not affect radio communications, Robillard said.

Lisa Brumit, a dispatcher with Oxnard-based Gold Coast Ambulance, said she received numerous calls from people who were concerned about how they would use their electric-powered medical equipment.

“We told them if they needed power for medical reasons they can come to one of our stations and use our electricity,” Brumit said.

* MASSIVE OUTAGE

Power failure blacks out huge swaths of 7 states. A1