Headline: Power Outage in Washington

Source: Associated Press, 2 October 2001, 10:47 AM ET

URL: http://dailynews.yahoo.com/htx/ap/20011002/pl/dc_power_outage_2.html

WASHINGTON - Office buildings and street lights across portions of downtown Washington, including the Justice Department and the FBI, lost power briefly Tuesday morning after failures at two power substations.

Hundreds of workers left the Justice and FBI buildings and mingled in the morning sunshine on Pennsylvania Avenue during the 45-minute power outage. Power was restored in other locations in a much shorter time, according to a Potomac Electric Power Co. spokesman

The outages occurred when two Pepco substations went off-line, said spokesman Bob Dobkin. The utility was investigating to see what caused the problem, but it was not a result of a terrorist attack, he added.

Several people in the crowd said portions of the FBI and Justice buildings went completely dark and that supervisors walked around and told employees they could leave if they wanted.

One woman, who asked not to be identified because she works for a federal agency, said she feared briefly that the outage could have been caused by terrorism.

It took only a few minutes for Pepco to restore power to most of the area, although some buildings were without electricity longer because they had to turn circuit breakers back on manually, Dobkin said.

Other sites that lost power included the Federal Aviation Administration, the Energy Department, the Ronald Reagan Building, the Canadian Embassy and the Associated Press's 'K' Street offices.

-- Andre Weltman (aweltman@state.pa.us), October 02, 2001