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Much of New Mexico Without Power

Story Filed: Saturday, March 18, 2000 8:37 PM EST

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) -- Much of New Mexico experienced a power blackout Saturday, shutting down radio and television stations across the state and snarling traffic in Albuquerque.

From Las Cruces to Gallup to Albuquerque, power went out shortly before 5 p.m.

The outage began with several sharp surges and then darkness. Power came back on in about 15 minutes, then went out again 15 minutes later.

Public Service Company of New Mexico spokeswoman Julie Gray was in the Albuquerque Museum when the power went out. She said she was trying to determine the extent of the outage.

The Gallup Fire Department opened its emergency response center and the central dispatcher in Raton in the northeast corner of the state reported that power was out in the communities of Cimarron, Springer and Ute Park.

Traffic lights were out, causing major snarls throughout Albuquerque.

Radio, television stations and newspaper newsrooms in Albuquerque, Sante Fe, Taos, Los Alamos, and Socorro were without power. The Associated Press bureau in Albuquerque was also in the dark.

People with battery-powered television sets were able to watch the NCAA basketball tournament. The state high school tournament, however, had to be halted when the lights went out in the Pan American Center in Las Cruces in the extreme southern part of the state.

The towns of Farmington in the extreme northwest corner of the state and Hobbs in the extreme southeast were not affected.

El Paso, Texas, had city-wide outage for about 30 minutes Saturday afternoon.

Raymond Ko, owner of the Ko Palace restaurant in Albuquerque, said he was afraid he was going to have to close if the blackout continued. His staff was putting candles on the dining tables.

``I'm not worried. We're cooking with gas,'' Ko said.

Copyright ) 2000 Associated Press Information Services, all rights reserved.

http://library.northernlight.com/EC20000318480000033.html? cb=200&dx=2006&sc=0#doc

-- (Dee360Degree@aol.com), March 18, 2000

Answers

http://www.newsday.co m/ap/topnews/ap443.htm

Much of New Mexico Without Power

By RICHARD BENKE, Associated Press Writer

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) -- A fire in a transmission line knocked out electric power across much of New Mexico for more than an hour Saturday, snarling traffic in Albuquerque, shutting down radio and television stations and forcing the state high school basketball tournament to halt play.

From Las Cruces to Gallup to Albuquerque to Santa Fe to Taos, power went out shortly before 5 p.m. It came back on line, in phases, after about 6 p.m.

The outage began with several sharp surges and then darkness. Power came back on in about 15 minutes, then went out again 15 minutes later.

Public Service Company of New Mexico spokeswoman Julie Grey was in the Albuquerque Museum when the power went out.

''We had a fire on one of our major transmission lines from the San Juan Generating Station (near Farmington) to Albuquerque,'' Grey said.

The fire caused the Four Corners Generating Station to ''trip off line,'' Grey said. That power plant, adjacent to the San Juan plant, is operated by Arizona Public Service, Grey said.

The cause of the fire was not immediately determined. It occurred about 4:45 p.m.

Grey said power would be restored from south to north -- the southern restoration being assisted by El Paso Electric Co.

In all, she estimated that more than half of PNM's 360,000 customers statewide had been affected. Precise numbers weren't immediately available.

The Gallup Fire Department opened its emergency response center and the central dispatcher in Raton in the northeast corner of the state reported that power was out in the communities of Cimarron, Springer and Ute Park, although Raton itself was unaffected.

Traffic lights went out, causing major snarls throughout Albuquerque.

Radio, television stations and newspaper newsrooms in Albuquerque, Santa Fe, Taos, Los Alamos and Socorro were affected by the blackout.

One exception was radio station KTAO in Taos.

''We're on the air at the moment because we're solar-powered,'' said Sara Allen, chief engineer at KTAO.

The Associated Press bureau in Albuquerque was in the dark, off and on, for nearly two hours.

People with battery-powered television sets were able to watch the NCAA basketball tournament. The state high school tournament, however, had to be halted when the lights went out in the Pan American Center in Las Cruces in southern New Mexico. The game was completed after about an hour's delay.

The towns of Farmington in the northwest corner of the state and Hobbs in the extreme southeast were not affected. Grey said Farmington, near the blacked-out power plants, has its own utility.

El Paso, Texas, also had a citywide outage for about 30 minutes Saturday afternoon.

Raymond Ko, owner of the Ko Palace restaurant in Albuquerque, said he might have to close if the blackout continued. His staff was putting candles on the dining tables.

"I'm not worried. We're cooking with gas,'' Ko said.

-- viewer (justp@ssing.by), March 18, 2000.

http://www.newsday.co m/ap/topnews/ap859.htm

(snip)

"Grey said power would be restored from south to north -- the southern restoration being assisted by El Paso Electric Co.

In all, she estimated that more than half of PNM's 360,000 customers statewide had been affected. Precise numbers weren't immediately available.

The Gallup Fire Department opened its emergency response center and the central dispatcher in Raton in the northeast corner of the state reported that power was out in the communities of Cimarron, Springer and Ute Park, although Raton itself was unaffected."

-- viewer (justp@ssing.by), March 18, 2000.

DeeEmBee, why did you edit the first line in the copy/pasted article you quoted?

The link you gave starts with "A fire in a transmission line knocked out electric power across much of New Mexico for more than an hour Saturday, snarling traffic in Albuquerque, shutting down radio and television stations and forcing the state high school basketball tournament to halt play."

-- (???@???.???), March 19, 2000.

Not fire in transmission line.... GRASS FIRE under main transmission lines... smoke, which is conductive by the way, arced out the main feeder from the power plant in Farmington.

We were without power for FOUR hours, not one hour...

Man work is a MESS this morning...

hidin' under the bed...

The Dog

-- The Dog (dogdesert@hotmail.com), March 19, 2000.

Bet Yourdon's glad he has all those solar panels. (Just kidding)

-- gilda (jess@listbot.com), March 19, 2000.

???

Dee's article didn't start that way--the two articles I posted did. The first stories coming off the news wires did not say a word about a grass fire. Both articles attributed the outage to a fire in a transmission line. The references to the grass fire did not show up until later articles. Who knows which fire occurred first?

-- viewer (justp@ssing.by), March 19, 2000.

viewer, I went to the link Dee gave, http://library.northernlight.com/EC20000318480000033.html? cb=200&dx=2006&sc=0#doc , and it started with "A fire blah blah blah", as I quoted above. But Dee's cut/paste from that link started with "Much of New Mexico experienced a power blackout".

I'm wondering wether she edited the article in her cut/paste, and if so, why.

-- (???@???.???), March 19, 2000.

Read it for yourself...

http://www.abqjournal.com/

snarlin' at the PNM guy...

The Dog

-- The Dog (dogdesert@hotmail.com), March 19, 2000.

Hey Dog,

Good to see ya.....Missed your humor.

Tell me, are you a taco bell dog, I cant spell chawawa...lol

Why you snarlin at the pm guy?

-- consumer (shh@aol.com), March 19, 2000.

http://library.northernlight.com/EC20000318 480000033.html?%20cb=200&dx=2006&sc=0#doc

Note: I copy and pasted the article from the above.

-- (Dee360Degree@aol.com), March 19, 2000.

PS...if somebody has a problem with the way I post an article, feel free to email me directly. I search hundreds of articles on a daily basis. If somebody has a problem with it...go search the news yourself from now on.

-- (Dee360Degree@aol.com), March 19, 2000.

PNM = Public works of New Mexico...i.e....electric company.

Still in massive cleanup of the factory. Electrical outages kick our ass...

GRRRRRRR...

The Dog

-- The Dog (dogdesert@hotmail.com), March 19, 2000.

Thanks dog, I'm in Ohio and dont have a 'clue' as to what pm was.

Dee, I enjoy your posts, if they dont like it,,,,,screw um

----consumer

who is STILL having a 'rude' day...

-- consumer (shh@aol.com), March 19, 2000.

Dee, to use a dogism...stay!

Sorry, ???, should have read you more closely. Thought you were accusing Dee of something I had done.

Update (even mentions y2k! :)

http://www.newsday.co m/ap/topnews/ap367.htm

New Mexico Co: More Lines Needed

By CHRIS ROBERTS, Associated Press Writer

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) -- A weekend power outage that affected as many as 1.6 million people in New Mexico and Texas could have been avoided if the power company had been allowed to build more transmission lines, a company spokesman said Sunday.

Don Brown, a Public Service Company of New Mexico spokesman, said the utility tried to get permission to build the additional transmission lines in the mid-1990s but was met with local opposition from residents who considered them an eyesore.

''We spent a lot of money and we were never able to erect a single line,'' he said.

The outage, New Mexico's biggest, shut down businesses, disabled traffic lights and cell phones Saturday and left people scrambling to find candles and flashlights from the northern town of Questa to El Paso, Texas.

Workers responded quickly to the crisis, which left them far busier Saturday than on New Year's Eve. They restored power in about six hours, aided by their resurrection of a familiar routine: Y2K drills.

''I really do think the Y2K drills honed our response time,'' Brown said.

Power from at least three generating stations in northwest New Mexico and Arizona is transmitted on lines that bottleneck in northwest New Mexico. A brush fire near the northern town of Kirtland engulfed one of the lines Saturday afternoon, and smoke particles that conduct electricity caused a short circuit, said Lt. Edmund Neff, a volunteer firefighter with the Valley Fire Department.

Fire then engulfed two of the poles supporting the lines.

''When smoke gets up in power lines, it'll make it act like a lightning storm out there,'' Neff said. ''People said there were explosions out there.''

When automatic switches transferred the power to another line, it was overloaded and it also shut down. Line after line overloaded and shut down through the state like dominoes falling, Brown said.

The fire apparently started with a controlled burn of dry vegetation on Navajo land that got out of hand about 15 miles southeast of Kirtland, Neff said. Strong winds in northwest New Mexico also fanned the flames, he said.

A message left at the Navajo Indian Irrigation Project office in nearby Farmington wasn't immediately returned Sunday. No one answered the phone at other Navajo offices.

Neff said the fire was extinguished by about 7 p.m. Saturday. The fire burned about 1,500 acres, he said, adding that none of the poles on the three towers burned through. No firefighters were injured.

During the blackout, the electric company was able to route only about half the electricity needed to power Albuquerque, which meant some areas had to be cut off so such high-priority users as hospitals didn't lose power entirely, Brown said.

He said more high-capacity transmission lines would have provided an alternate route for the power. Instead, about 1.3 million people in New Mexico lost their electricity. About 300,000 utility customers in El Paso also went without power Saturday.

AP-NY-03-19-00 1629EST< 

-- viewer (justp@ssing.by), March 19, 2000.