Power Outage In Florida Massive – Cause Undetermined
February 26, 2008 by Homeland Security NTARC News
Filed under Incident Reports
Power outages are cascading through many parts of South Florida, with Florida Power & Light and others reporting blackouts in portions of Miami, Doral, Westchester, Pembroke Pines, Miramar and Boca Raton.
Many traffic lights are not working and nine accidents were reported in Miami-Dade County between 1:04 p.m. and 1:26 p.m. Police agencies were dispatching officers to as many intersections as possible.
The lights flickered off at several South Florida hospitals, which had to switch to generator power.
“We had a blip here and the generators kicked in immediately,” Jackson Memorial Hospital spokeswoman Lorraine Nelson said.
Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami Beach and Baptist Hospital in Southwest Miami-Dade reported similar situations.
A spokeswoman for FPL said the company was investigating the extent and cause of the problem.
In one part of western Pembroke Pines, the outage began about 1:15 p.m., but service was restored within about 10 minutes.
The service failures came during an unusually warm February day in South Florida, with temperatures reaching near-record highs. At 1 p.m, Miami and West Palm Beach reported a reading of 84 degrees; it was 83 degrees in Fort Lauderdale.
Some air conditioning companies reported summer-like levels of service calls.
