Massive power outage hits millions in Florida

By Tom Brown

MIAMI (Reuters) - A massive power outage struck parts of Florida on Tuesday, knocking out electricity to millions of people, snarling traffic at intersections and trapping residents in elevators.

The outage was controlled quite swiftly and power came back to most areas of the "Sunshine State" within several hours.

Some sort of "disturbance" in the power grid forced the Turkey Point nuclear plant in south Florida to go into an emergency shutdown, said a spokeswoman for FPL Group Inc, the main energy provider in the area.

Other power companies were also affected as the outage spread sporadically but extensively up the Florida peninsula as far north as Tampa on the Gulf of Mexico. Officials called it a domino chain of blackouts.

A spokesman for Progress Energy's Florida utility said its clients were affected in the central part of the state.

Flights at Miami international airport were only marginally affected.

Linda Campbell of the Florida Reliability Coordinating Council said preliminary reports showed that the problem began at a substation in Miami-Dade County, leading to the loss of a transmission line and the shutdown of several plants owned by FPL subsidiary Florida Power and Light.

Mike Stone, a spokesman for the Florida Division of Emergency Management, said the blackout affected two to three million people while some local media said the number was higher.

Florida Power and Light said it expected to restore power to most Florida customers that lost power in about two hours.

"I don't know the cause of the outage," Stone told Reuters, saying authorities were waiting for an update from FPL. "There was a failure within the FPL system," he said.

Officials in Washington said there were no signs of a link to terrorism.

"There is no indication of a nexus to terrorism at this time ... we will continue to monitor," U.S. Homeland Security Department spokeswoman Laura Keehner said.

FAILING TRAFFIC LIGHTS, STUCK ELEVATORS

Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Alvarez also assured residents there was nothing sinister about the incident.

"What I can assure people is that this was something technical. It wasn't anything criminal related," Alvarez told a news conference.