»Life during blackouts

A California Court has found PG&E at fault for last December's massive blackout.
The yellow bands on the first floor are jimg's yellow plastic; I don't think there was any ambient light except the odd passing car.

from the Associated Press:

SAN FRANCISCO - A power outage that darkened busy stores near the peak of last year's holiday shopping season could have been avoided if Pacific Gas and Electric had taken preventive steps previously recommended by its own investigators, according to a regulatory report.

The California Public Utilities Commission report released Thursday covered a Dec. 20, 2003 blackout that cut power across a large section of San Francisco beginning in the early evening and continuing into the next night for some customers. The blackout affected about 100,000 customers, including downtown holiday stores bustling with shoppers on the final weekend before Christmas.

A cable failure in a power substation triggered a fire that caused the blackout, but the report concluded the lights probably would have stayed on if PG&E had followed up on the lessons learned from a similar 1996 incident.

PG&E's internal investigation into the 1996 episode produced a list of recommendations that included the installation of a smoke detection system.

But the equipment was never installed - a factor that may have contributed to PG&E's slow response to the fire last December. The utility didn't call local firefighters until two hours after the fire started, said Richard Clark, director of the PUC's consumer protection and safety division.

"We believe the fire and the outage were entirely avoidable," Clark told the PUC's board Thursday. "I find it quite troubling that PG&E didn't implement its own recommendations from its own investigation" into the 1996 fire.

Thursday's report paves the way for the PUC to open proceedings to consider whether PG&E should be fined for last December's blackout. PG&E has already paid $2.3 million in claims to customers who suffered losses during the power outage, PG&E spokesman John Nelson said.

PG&E already had reached conclusions similar to the PUC's findings in a company report released three months ago that coincided with a "heartfelt" apology from the San Francisco-based company.

The utility is making the recommended improvements to guard against future blackouts in San Francisco and other power substations, Nelson said.