San Francisco power outage knocks out Web sites

By Leonard Anderson and Eric Auchard

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Sporadic power failures cascaded across San Francisco for two hours on Tuesday, causing minor disruptions in the downtown business district and knocking out major Web sites including Craigslist.

Power was restored to most city residents by 3:30 p.m. PDT, according to Joe Molica, spokesman for Pacific Gas & Electric Co., owned by PG&E Corp. and the main utility in the city.

About 40,000 electricity customers in San Francisco and an area south of the city were left temporarily in the dark.

But a power failure at a 227,000-square-foot data center in downtown San Francisco knocked out a variety of popular Web sites with ties to the city, including Craigslist, the world's seventh most popular English-language online destination.

Also hit were TypePad, which plays host to many popular blogs; Technorati, the top blog search site; virtual world site Second Life; Yelp, a local entertainment review site; and Gamespot, a gaming site owned by CNET Networks Inc..

A Second Life employee responded on the company's official blog to complaints it had not done enough to secure the site against outages by noting how widespread the problems were for Web firms concentrated in the city's South of Market district.

"Hey everyone -- we thank you for your passion and caring so much that you want to be in Second Life," the employee wrote. "I'd just like to remind you that this isn't a Second Life-specific problem. Major Web sites were affected too!"

HOURS TO RECOVER