The Region : Wires Blamed for Failure

The 5 1/2-hour power failure in West Los Angeles and part of the San Fernando Valley was caused by a malfunction in the wiring that controls a power station’s circuit breakers, officials of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power said. The malfunction Tuesday tripped the breakers and interrupted the flow of electricity to 18 smaller distribution plants, the officials said. The Los Angeles City Council ordered a report on the incident after Councilmen Marvin Braude and Zev Yaroslavsky blamed DWP officials for not anticipating the problem. A DWP official told the City Council that there was no way to foresee the malfunction. The outage cut off power to 105,000 DWP customers. The malfunction caused the automated, unmanned power plant at 1840 Centinela Ave. to shut down.