Light to be shed on cuts in power

Thursday, July 5, 2001 | 11:03 a.m.

Clark County officials say they will now get warnings before the lights and air conditioners go out.

Bob Andrews, county emergency management director, said Nevada Power has provided emergency action plans to his agency, the police and other public safety agencies. The plans outline zones that would be affected by rolling blackouts.

Nevada Power officials, citing safety concerns, will not publicly identify what areas will be hit by blackouts in the case of severe power shortages. Company employees would not even reveal what areas lost power after Monday's rolling blackouts in the Las Vegas Valley.

Andrews said the problem was that Nevada Power also did not notify police and other essential agencies. The problem was particularly acute for police, who needed to maintain traffic flow.

Sonya Headen, Nevada Power spokeswoman, said the company evaluated its procedures and provided copies of its response plans to public safety agencies after the blackouts.

She said the company had difficulty providing advance warning to those government agencies because the crisis escalated from a "condition yellow" to a "condition red," requiring power cuts, in a matter of minutes Monday.

"It was a highly unusual situation," Headen said. "We try to give as much notification as possible."

Andrews said those agencies should be better positioned if blackouts occur again.

"We've made some progress," he said. "They (Nevada Power officials) have emergency action plans. We said we need to have them in our dispatch offices.

"The public safety agencies that have them are using them to map those zones (that would be affected by blackouts)," he said. "That puts us a little farther ahead."

No injuries or deaths were linked to the 45-minute blackouts Monday, which affected about 10,000 residents.

Still, some motorists who were caught in the blackouts said luck played a role. Cliff Monett, a retired slot-machine mechanic, was on Flamingo Road when the traffic lights went out.

"When you see the lights go out like that, it kind of catches you by surprise," he said. "It was a little bit like chaos. Nobody knew what was going on."

Nevada Power officials said this morning that blackouts are unlikely today. Several area generators were out of service Monday, which contributed to the regional shortages that triggered the outage.

The Mohave Generating Station is back in service after mechanical problems idled both generating units Monday. The coal-fired station near Laughlin provides about 196 megawatts to the Las Vegas area, enough for about 100,000 homes.

The grid also is benefiting from another 50 megawatts from the Sunrise Station on the valley's eastern edge. Mechanical problems at that plant also contributed to the blackouts, said company officials, who joined state government agencies to urge conservation.

Triple-digit temperatures across the West are pushing demand for energy to power air conditioning.

State and county officials are asking employees to turn off appliances, including computers, that aren't being used. They are extending that request to homeowners and renters.

"Simply things like keeping your thermostat at 78 degrees and running major household appliances in the late evening or early morning hours can help the situation," Don Soderberg, chairman of the Nevada Public Utilities Commission, said.