Baja California News- Prisoners of the Grid

[phantom power]

(LAS CRUCES, N.M.) - The September 8 blackout provoked by a failure at a private utility company substation in Yuma, Arizona, rolled across the border and affected more than 1.3 million people in northern Mexico, according to press accounts.

...

All in all, the power outage disrupted the lives of nearly seven million people in the United States and northern Mexico.

San Diego County was especially hard hit by the blackout, which was called the biggest one in local history, with preliminary economic losses estimated in the $100 million ball-park. Firefighters responded to people trapped in elevators, while restaurant owners and workers watched food rot away. Students got an unexpected three-day weekend.

The lack of an emergency power generator at a pump station was blamed for a massive spill of 1.9 million gallons of sewage into a local lagoon and the subsequent closure of four Pacific beaches threatened with contamination.

http://www.salem-news.com/articles/september102011/prisoners-grid.php