Power Outage Blacks Out Downtown Washington

The lights went out in much of downtown Washington Friday night, plunging the Washington Monument, the National Theater and scores of shops and office buildings from Georgetown to the Mall into darkness.

The local power company said a generating station across the Potomac River in Alexandria, Va., failed around 8:30 p.m. The power was restored shortly after 9:30 p.m.

The blackout brought the curtain down early on a performance of the musical “Chicago” at the National Theater, and on “The Phantom of the Opera” at the Kennedy Center.

Police lighted flares at key intersections downtown, and cars crept tentatively through the dark streets.

The blackout affected some 10,000 customers in the Georgetown, Foggy Bottom, Mall and Tidal Basin areas. Some Metro rapid transit stations were affected.

Bill Sim, vice president of Potomac Electric Power Co., said the outage was triggered when a piece of electrical equipment and a circuit breaker both failed at a substation in neighboring Prince George’s County.

Charlie Thomas, a park ranger at the Washington Monument, said several tourists were at the top of the 550-foot obelisk when the power failed. He said the tourists were guided by emergency lighting down the 897 steps to the base of the monument.