COLLEGE PARK, Md. (WJZ) — Widespread power outages sweep across Washington, D.C. and Maryland, forcing thousands in the dark, including the White House along with other high security buildings.
Christie Ileto explains the outage started in southern Maryland.
Officials say that an equipment failure in southern Maryland forced federal buildings to evacuate, universities like Maryland to close and mass transit, like the D.C. Metro to run on backup generators.
Witnesses say it sounded like an explosion.
“The sound you hear from a welder, only this was 1,000 times louder.”
But it was a 230,000 volt line that shorted. Partially charred ceramic insulators show electric crews what went wrong at a Charles County switching station, causing midday confusion and triggering a widespread blackout across D.C. and its suburbs.
“There was a power outage that did briefly have an impact on the White House complex.”
Government agencies went dark. Metro riders searched for exits on dim platforms.
“We tried to get into the Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian. Power was out there.”
Even tourists were shut out from museums.
Utility company Pepco says there was never a loss of permanent electricity, but a downed transmission line caused a dip in voltage.
“I actually thought it was just my building. I didn’t know it was like the whole D.C. area,” said Hima Okpa, student.
The University of Maryland College Park lost service instantly. Classes were canceled by 2 p.m., and still Tuesday evening, the sub remains closed.
“It all went dark and we all started going, ‘What is going on?’ Within about five minutes, the alarms went off,” said Shelby Vaughn, student.
Firefighters freed 12 people from six elevators on campus, raising suspicions about how it happened.
“We thought it was like terrorists, so we got scared to come to Stamp because it’s the central area,” said Kristine Ugbaja, student.
The Department of Human Resources says this is not terror related, but it has crews 40 miles away looking at how to fix the fire and failure that could have been worse.
The State Department had a similar outage last December, which Pepco said was caused by construction.
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