Power Failures Southern California

Saturday's big blackout struck the San Fernando Valley area capriciously, leaving some residents in the sweltering darkness of stalled elevators and unlit shops, while handing others little more than a momentary lull in the rumble of their air conditioners. Throughout the Valley and its environs, police said, motorists struggled through intersections where the traffic signals were either out completely or just blinking. By late Saturday night, many signals still were not working, said Lt.

At 3:45 Saturday afternoon, the lights went out in Orange County. Elevators stopped between floors. Rides halted at Disneyland. Businesses and stores closed their doors. And traffic lights everywhere went dark. The gigantic power outage that swept across the Western seaboard Saturday left more than half a million homes and offices in Orange County without electricity for about three hours. The outage spawned a storm of local problems, some big, most of them small.

A whopping power failure blacked out huge swaths of seven western states on a sizzling afternoon Saturday, trapping some people in elevators and others in airports, melting grocery store ice cream, shutting down movie theaters and gumming up traffic everywhere. Lights blinked out and air conditioners wheezed off for nearly 5 million California residents when major power lines feeding the state failed about 3:45 p.m.

With temperatures expected to push into the low 90s today, Southern California Edison officials concerned about overtaxing the system have recommended that customers cut back from noon to 6 p.m. use of large appliances such as washers, dryers and--perhaps most onerous--large fans and air conditioners. The utility's customers, including 1.

A harsh winter storm stretching from the Sierra Nevada to the sea may have caused as many as eight deaths Sunday, as car crashes piled up from Victorville to Santa Rosa and a private plane slammed into a dry lake bed in eastern San Bernardino County. The moisture-laden cold front swept into the state late Friday, dumping up to eight feet of snow in the high Sierra and grounding commercial airliners in Reno and Sacramento.

Last week, the rains. This week, the winds. Santa Ana winds scoured the Southland from the low desert to the Channel Islands, killing two men and sending power lines crashing, trucks toppling and dust, sand, tumbleweeds and shingles flying. Gusts of up to 90 mph were blamed for the deaths of a man in a van hit by a tree in Lake View Terrace and another man who was electrocuted by a downed power line in Fontana.

Los Angeles' sweltering temperatures turned out to be a blessing in disguise for the Department of Water and Power when a widespread power outage left parts of California and several other western states without electricity Tuesday. "We had a lot of resources available because we were anticipating a lot of air-conditioners in the Valley," DWP official Maureen Palmer said Wednesday.

Blustery Santa Ana winds that barreled through Southern California left thousands of residents without electricity, toppling huge trees and carpeting streets with palm fronds and leaves. Gusts of up to 60 mph caused outages to about 14,600 customers, most of whom were sleeping when their electricity went off. Southern California Edison got its first power outage calls at 8 p.m. Thursday from a wave of customers in the South Bay.

Blustery winds that barreled through Southern California left thousands of residents without electricity, toppling huge trees and carpeting streets with palm fronds and leaves. Gusts of up to 60 mph caused outages to about 14,600 customers, most of whom were sleeping when their electricity went off. Southern California Edison got its first power outage calls at 8 p.m. Thursday from a wave of customers in the South Bay.

A dust storm swept up near the Arizona-New Mexico border Sunday, causing a spate of accidents that left eight people dead and at least 20 others injured, officials said. Six people in a truck and two in a car were killed in wrecks involving 24 vehicles, said Bob Stein, spokesman for the Arizona Department of Public Safety. In the Southland, meanwhile, strong winds gusting up to 40 m.p.h. knocked out electrical power and hampered a rescue effort.