County Waits for the Amps to Fall

Cal State Fullerton canceled 60 evening classes for more than 1,000 students Wednesday because of the threat of a blackout. A sign at Golden West College in Huntington Beach informed students the campus was closed, the eighth time since last summer that the school voluntarily powered down to avoid thousands of dollars in power surcharges.

Nerves frayed throughout Orange County as Southern California Edison teetered on the edge of rolling blackouts.

As news spread that rotating outages had hit areas served by Pacific Gas & Electric in Northern California, customers served by Edison braced for the prospect of being plunged into darkness.

The company was flooded with phone calls from people alarmed by rumors that blackouts were set to begin--or already had.

“Simple outages that happen every day are being viewed as the blackouts have started,” Edison spokesman Steven Conroy said. “Our hands are full.”

Newport Beach police directed traffic at Irvine Avenue and Santiago Drive when the traffic lights went out. Officers said they weren’t sure why the signals stopped working but added they got more than a dozen calls from citizens worried about power outages.

In addition to canceling night classes, Cal State Fullerton closed the library and offices for faculty and administrators at 4 p.m., something it has been doing on days with power emergencies. The campus is on intersession--between semesters when relatively few students are on campus taking special classes.

But at Titan Stadium on campus, the Los Angeles Galaxy went ahead with an internationally televised soccer game--with a backup generator at the ready.

Southern California Edison asked Chapman University in Orange to interrupt its power at 6:30 a.m. Wednesday, and the cut was expected to last until at least 6 a.m. today.

Many large employers, such as Chapman, signed contracts with Edison for cheaper power in exchange for agreeing to cut usage during power crises. If they don’t, they pay huge surcharges to keep the lights on.

Shuffling Classrooms

Chapman also is between terms, with only half the usual number of students attending classes, so problems were kept to a minimum.

Classes were moved to the university’s two newest buildings--the law school and the business school--because they are on a different power grid than the rest of the campus, said Gary Brahm, Chapman’s executive vice president and chief financial officer.

Still, activities such as film editing could not be completed because their locations were without power.

“It is a very untenable situation and very different from what was envisioned years ago when the university decided to participate” in the energy-saving program, Brahm said.

Chapman was asked to turn down its power the week before finals in December, but the school decided not to because it didn’t want to disrupt students writing term papers or studying in the library. In all, there were four interruptions in December that Chapman ignored, costing the university $80,000 in surcharges, Brahm said.

A men’s and women’s basketball doubleheader was moved from Golden West to Saddleback College in Mission Viejo. But at KOCE, the campus public television station, the show went on.

Using generators, KOCE had enough power to broadcast taped shows but not enough light for scheduled live feeds, which were canceled. Golden West has a power contract similar to Chapman’s.

“It is a bit of a challenge to run a TV station without power,” said station manager Bruce Reed, “but things are going OK thanks to diesel fuel.”

Administrators at some public schools in the county excoriated power companies, saying they were ignoring schools’ special needs in the event of a blackout.

“Edison won’t even return our phone calls,” said Michael Fine, assistant superintendent for business services in the Newport-Mesa Unified School District.

Fine said principals need to know whether power outages will be one-hour rolling blackouts or last several hours.

If power is only out for an hour, principals could keep students on campus. But some schools have windowless classrooms that would be plunged into darkness, especially on chilly days when doors are kept closed. Those students might have to be dismissed or transferred to another campus during a long lights-out period.

“We’ve called and said, ‘Talk to us,’ ” Fine said. “We could be preparing for this. . . . But they’re completely ignoring us.”

Many administrators said they are not alarmed by prospective power outages, but they are preparing for them.

“All learning does not depend on electricity,” said Alan Trudell, a spokesman for the Garden Grove Unified School District. “Our administrators and teachers are wise enough to improvise.”

If students are using computers when the power goes off, the teacher could use that as an opportunity to explain the need to back up files, Trudell said. If the power remains off, there are always the old standbys--the library and its books.

Lettie Boggs, the assistant superintendent for facilities and operations at the Anaheim City School District, said that if the power goes out, people at each school have been assigned to check dark rooms, especially bathrooms, to make sure students inside can get out safely.

Instruction will continue, she said. “Teachers can still talk and students can still listen.”

At the Home Depot in Santa Ana, manager Javier Marquez said customers were asking about energy-efficient outdoor light fixtures and bulbs. But he had yet to see people stockpiling batteries and flashlights.

“It doesn’t seem like people are panicking right now,” Marquez said. “Maybe the public’s not going to go out and buy things until they go through the very first blackout.”

That was narrowly avoided in Southern California on Wednesday, in part because of countless simple conservation efforts. In Fullerton, for instance, decorative lighting in the downtown business district was turned off Wednesday because of the threat of blackouts.

When Traffic Lights Go Dark

In 1999, Mission Viejo placed boxes containing temporary stop signs at 32 intersections throughout the city in case blackouts disabled traffic lights. On Wednesday, city officials prepared to deploy them.

“We’ve got one of our pickup trucks loaded with stop signs ready to deploy to any areas that may have needed them,” Mission Viejo City Manager Dan Joseph said.

At convalescent homes such as the Country Valley Plaza in Santa Ana, staff stood by somewhat nervously as the possibility of rolling blackouts increased. Recently the facility has been testing its generators twice a week instead of the usual once weekly, administrator Geovany Fino said.

Across town, Margit Apodaca, a manager in the Central Justice Center in Santa Ana, said, “My entire world is in my computer. I guess we would have to revert back to manual typewriters.”

And instead of sending e-mail messages, “we would have to actually get up and walk around to talk to people.”

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Times staff writers Jeff Gottlieb, Jessica Garrison, Hector Becerra, Kimi Yoshino, Daniel Yi, and correspondents Sean Kirwan and Alex Katz contributed to this report.