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Yup... I was just without power for... 12 hours exactly!

The power went down in Southern California today. Almost all of San Diego county was out, and the blackout stretched through to parts of Mexico and Arizona.

I just did a quick google search for other blackouts, and I'm disappointed that we didn't get on the top 5 biggest blackouts list, although I guess with 1.5 million powerless, we weren't all that close. There are plenty of blackouts this size, it's just that they usually all are caused by something! A hurricane or blizzard. This seems to be more of a spontaneous cascading failure. From what I've heard it started in a switchyard in Arizona.

It was fun, because everyone was out walking around. Some friends and I walked around and went to some stores. There was a line of 30 or so people for the little local convenience store, but we got to skip it because we just wanted snacks as opposed to water and ice. All the gas pumps were out, but for some reason everyone thought it would be a good idea to drive around a ton.

Normally I wouldn't care but... I was just firing up Magicka for the first time, then like 10 minutes in the power goes out!

anyone else effected by this? (I think ATM they're lighting everything up block by block, and I know some people who had power back 3 or 4 hrs ago)

[edit]
this article raises the people-out-of-power count to 5 million.
http://www.yumasun.com/news/yuma-72827-power-friday.html

also:

Note "employee" is not plural. I'd hate to be that guy right now!

When I used to live in my old flat in Cyprus it was a great vantage point to see storms around the city and the like. Sometimes in the hottest part of summer (before they had a new power station and before it then blew up) they would control power cuts to all parts of the city one at a time (apart from tourist and hospital areas) as no-one listed to the request to use less AC (was 46C at one point). You could see massive squareish parts of the city turning on and off as it went on. Tops. Apart from when you were left in the boiling dark. Amazing how AC wears off so quickly...

Cheers

Where I live when the power would go out it would only be for peoples homes while at most businesses the power would stay on. It's probably standard practice to keep the power on longer for the people that pay more for the same electricity.

@ Neuro Fuzzy:

I'm surprised they didn't just close down the store since usually kids can't make change without a machine doing it for them. And the fact that most registers use electricity.