A massive power outage threw San Francisco into chaos for most of the work day on Friday, knocking out traffic signals, paralyzing businesses and halting the city’s famed cable cars.
The power outage, which was triggered by a fire in a PG&E Corp utility substation, disrupted they city’s normally bustling financial district, home to banks and technology companies.
The blackout started just after 9am and at one point affected nearly 90,000 customers, PG&E said.
The cause of the fire was a circuit breaker failure at the substation, PG&E spokesman Paul Doherty said.
Office workers unable to access elevators or use their keycards spilled out onto the sidewalks, some wandering the streets in search of an open cafe or sunny spot to enjoy a rare warm San Francisco day.
Others simply went home, with long lines forming for ferries. Some cable car operators snoozed after their cars stalled on the street rails.
Traffic was snarled and emergency workers responded to 20 elevator rescues, according to the city’s fire department, but there were no reported deaths or major injuries.
However, many businesses — from coffee shops to major banks — took a hit.
Wells Fargo & Co closed 13 bank branches and four office buildings, while the New York Stock Exchange said its Arca Options trading floor in San Francisco was briefly unavailable. Employees in Goldman Sachs’ financial district office were sent home.
Baker Avenue Asset Management chief investment officer King Lip said his firm was in the middle of a trade when “all our systems went down” and employees in another state had to complete the transaction.
Fourteen neighborhoods were affected, including the main shopping district near Union Square, where stores turned signs to “closed” and major retailers such as Macy’s and Louis Vuitton shut their doors.
In a city proud of its technological prowess, the outage forced residents back to the dark ages. At the salad bar MIXT, cashiers took credit card payments using old-fashioned paper imprints.
For more than two hours, trains barreled through the Montgomery Street station — one of the busiest stops that services the downtown and financial district — as the outage prevented them from stopping until backup generators came online, Bay Area Rapid Transit spokesman Jim Allison said.
Power was finally restored to all customers by 6pm local time, PG&E said.
San Francisco International Airport remained operational, and a US Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said there was no evidence of terrorism.
“This had nothing to do with cyber,” said Joe Weiss, an expert on control-system cybersecurity who has testified to Congress about structural weaknesses in grid components. “The real question is how could one substation take out, effectively, San Francisco?”
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of