Residents Wait Out Afternoon Blackouts

As rolling blackouts hit wide swaths of Ventura County on Monday, officials said they expect new emergency generators in place at the County Government Center as early as June.

This year alone, the government center has experienced 26 blackouts--each one costing about $450,000 in lost services and payroll expenses, said Thomas Womack, chief deputy director of the county’s General Services Administration.

Womack said companies are now bidding on a contract to supply three 2-megawatt diesel generators at a cost of between $3 million and $4 million.

Chief Administrative Officer Harry Hufford said the replacement generators are crucial.

“We lose an incredible amount of productivity when people can’t work,” Hufford said. “It’s a business decision; taxpayers are paying for services they can’t get.”

The county had initially agreed with utility companies to take part in an interruptible power program, under which government administrators would cut power at peak periods in exchange for discounted rates. But the statewide energy crisis exacerbated the problem, plunging the county center into 14 days of partial outages in January alone.

Supervisor Steve Bennett had hoped for natural gas-fueled generators, because they burn cleaner than diesel, but he was unable to persuade enough colleagues to postpone the decision and hold out for cleaner technologies.

“I’m still concerned about the diesel option,” Bennett said. “Although we have rolling blackouts now, with a little more time we could have something to back us up that was cleaner.”

The diesel generators could be installed by the end of June at the earliest and no later than mid-July.

Elsewhere in the county, the lights started going out at noon Monday and blackouts were expected to last until 8 p.m. People were trapped in elevators, traffic lights failed, and businesses struggled to serve customers.

Large patches of Oxnard, Ventura, Moorpark, Camarillo and Thousand Oaks lost power for between 60 and 90 minutes each. And utility officials warned of more outages to come.

“This is just the beginning,” said Nancy Williams, a spokeswoman for Southern California Edison. “As summer hits us, we will see more.”

Williams estimated that about 8,000 people lost electricity in Ventura County on Monday. Ojai, Port Hueneme and Fillmore were not affected, she said.

The blackouts occurred because several generating plants around the state are out of commission, she said.

Emergency services workers had planned for these outages since the first rolling blackouts hit the state in January. The nearly 3,000 Ventura County residents on life-support systems or unable to care for themselves were registered with the utility companies so their power was spared.

Josh Davies, disaster coordinator for the county emergency medical services department, said people on life-support systems usually have battery backup systems that can keep their equipment running for up to five hours.

In Oxnard, six firefighters responded to an unexpected blackout at Financial Plaza on Vineyard Avenue, which includes several office buildings.

At the complex’s Paine Webber building, a woman and her young children were briefly trapped in an elevator. In the 21-story Dean Witter tower, the tallest building in Ventura County, throngs of workers took the stairs and headed to area restaurants or waited outdoors until the power returned.

“We had to walk,” said Julie Sicoff, 30, who works at Accountemps on the 15th floor. “The lights were off. Computers were off.”

At Moorpark Central Market, Suki Singh, the owner, said power was out from 1 p.m. until about 2:30 p.m. He usually sells lots of meat, but his scales and saw weren’t working during the outage.

“We turned about 12 customers away,” he said. “I’m really concerned about us losing customers and business. All businesses are concerned. There’s nothing we can do about it though, I guess.”

The Ventura County Fire Department twice had to assist people stuck in wheelchairs on the second floor of homes with no elevators to get downstairs. Minor accidents were also reported where traffic lights were not working.

More outages could come today.

“Everyone is on alert for another day like today,” Williams said.

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