Calif. N-plant shut down by power outage

SAN DIEGO -- More than 2 million people on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border were left without power yesterday in a major outage that extended from Arizona to Southern California, including San Diego.

Mike Niggli, chief operating officer of San Diego Gas & Electric Co., ruled out terrorism but said the cause was unclear. "To my knowledge this is the first time we've lost an entire system," he said.

The outage that started shortly before 4 p.m. locally extended from southern parts of Orange County to San Diego to Yuma, Ariz. It also was affecting cities south of the border, across much of northern Baja.

All outgoing flights from San Diego's Lindbergh Field were grounded and police stations were using generators to accept emergency calls across San Diego County.

Charles Coleman, a spokesman from Southern California Edison, said the two reactors at the San Onofre nuclear power plant went offline at 3:38 p.m., as they are programmed to do when there is a disturbance in the power grid, but there was no danger to the public or to workers there.

Residents in parts of eastern San Diego County and Yuma, Ariz., endured sweltering temperatures with no air-conditioning. "It's 113 degrees right now outside . . . ," said Yuma city spokesman Greg Hyland, sitting in the dark, answering calls. Niggli said his 1.4 million customers may get power back today. -- AP