Feb 26, 2008 7:30 pm US/Eastern
"It Was Not Sabotage," Says Mayor Alvarez
MIAMI (CBS4) ―
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Mayor Carlos Alvarez of Miami-Dade County
CBS
The power outage across Florida forced the Miami-Dade County's Emergency Operations Center (EOC) to partially activate. Mayor Carlos Alvarez held a press conference Tuesday afternoon explaining how extra man power was brought in by both fire rescue and the police department simply as a precaution. They said they didn't have an excessive amount of phone calls at the EOC, so it was simply a safety precaution. The EOC was at level 2.
Alvarez said he was told by the Department of Homeland Security that "there was no indication or evidence of foul play not only in Dade or any other counties." The public safety departments, fire and police, were not overwhelmed by the power outage. He added that the issue was of a "technical" nature at Turkey Point.
Significant equipment failure occurred at a substation in West Miami-Dade County at 1:09 p.m.," said FPL Spokesperson Aletha Player, who spoke with reporters at the Miami-Dade Emergency Operations Center. "We want to assure you that this failure is in no way a safety issue for our customers or the residents within each of the jurisdictions, and in fact the electrical systems performed as it should have in a failure event such as this."
Player said that not all customers lost power at once, but that at the height of the outage, about 700 thousand people were without power in FPL's service area, stretching from South Miami-Dade to Palm Beach County. About 3 million people in Florida were without power at some time during the afternoon.
Utility customers in parts of more than 30 counties experienced problems because they are interconnected with FPL's grid.
The mayor advised people to call 311 or 1-800-OUTAGE for information rather than calling 911. As rush-hour began late Tuesday afternoon, there were more than 20 incidents or accidents or slow, heavily congested reports.
As power is restored, the next step is for Florida Power and Light to determine what caused the problem.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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