Two million lose power as outage strikes Florida

By Tom Brown

MIAMI (Reuters) - A massive blackout struck parts of Florida on Tuesday, knocking out power to millions of people as it snarled traffic at intersections and trapped residents in elevators across the state.

The outage, which affected at least 2 million people, was controlled relatively swiftly and power came back to most areas of the "Sunshine State" within several hours.

The head of Florida Power & Light, the main energy provider in the area, said the afternoon blackout was triggered by an unexplained equipment failure and fire at a Miami transmission facility, which caused an automatic emergency shutdown of the Turkey Point nuclear plant in south Florida.

"We will conduct an extensive investigation into all aspects of the failure," Armando Olivera, president of the FPL Group Inc. subsidiary, told reporters.

At least three other power companies were affected as the outage spread sporadically but extensively up the Florida peninsula as far north as Tampa on the Gulf of Mexico in what officials called a domino chain of blackouts.

The North American Electric Reliability Corporation, an industry group, said it launched a review of the outage that shut down 15 transmission lines.

Miami-Dade fire rescue service said the biggest danger that faced residents was failing traffic lights as people were not following rules that say intersections should be treated as four-way stops when the signals are out.

In the Miami area alone, authorities said they responded to more than 50 emergency calls about people trapped in elevators although no injuries or serious problems were reported.