By SILVIO J. PANTA
Several thousand people were affected Sunday by a massive power outage that drained half of El Centro and surrounding areas of electricity for about an hour.
All of Heber and parts of Seeley were also impacted by the outage which Imperial Irrigation District spokesman Kevin Kelley said was caused by a surge protection unit that was supposed keep the system from malfunctioning in case of a lightning strike.
But for some reason the unit, called a lightning arrestor, activated, causing the two components at a substation located in the southwestern portion of the city, Kelley said.
“That part of the substation was lost,” Kelley said. “The two (components) would have been working to serve the electrical grid.”
Kelley initially thought high demand led to the outages. Kelley said he was uncertain at what exact time the outages occurred but speculated that the outage happened after 7:30 p.m. Power was restored about an hour later.
My power was out for 3 hours in Imperial, from 4 to 7. I tried in vain to call IID. The one time I got connected, I got stuck in a Customer Service recording loop. I couldn't find any local radio stations on my transistor radio, so I guess they were affected by the outage too. Radio stations in Coachella Valley and Mexicali should be contacted and asked to make informational announcements during any future emergencies.
Posted by: Imperial resident | September 08, 2008 at 08:08 AM
For some reason they always forget to mention Calexico. the power was out way past two hours.
Posted by: calexico resident | September 07, 2008 at 10:17 PM
I live in calexico and parts of the city had power but most did not. The power went out before 4pm and was restored in my area after 6pm. There were parts of the city that got their power back before 6pm.
Posted by: susana | September 07, 2008 at 07:18 PM