Massive power outage blamed on hardware, not monkeywrenchers

n the 7th of April, power outages cascaded from Charles County, MD through PG County and into Washington DC. WTOP News reported that Homeland Security was inundated with calls asking if "nefarious activity" was to blame, but official blame went to failing equipment in Charles County, MD. The power outages spread all over the area. University of MD lost power. Traffic lights shut down. Metro stations lost power and museums on the Mall were evacuated. Metro was running but warning that escalators were stopped in many stations.The Dupont Circle metro station was shut down for lack of power to run escalators. There were reports of people stuck in elevators around the region. WTOP Radio has been covering this on a continuous basis like it was September 11th all over again, even though until about 80-90 years ago centralized electricity was a luxury restricted to cities and towns. There were reports that Homeland Security was inundated with phone calls asking if "nefarious activity" was to blame. WTOP stated that failing equipment at a power plant in Charles County, MD was the cause of the outage. They said "nefarious activity" was ruled out. By that statement they lumped pro-Earth guerillas in with foreign fighters as suspected but ruled-out causes of the outages. This has the further effect of taking a cheap shot at both. Actually, there is a good chance that a form of "nefarious activity" is the cause of this, but carried out be corporate executives of whatever power company owns the failing plant. I am not sure whether PEPCO or SMECO owns the plant in question, but parts of the area's notoriously unreliable power grid are owned by both. The "nefarious activity" would take the form of investing the profits from ever-rising electrical rates in executive's pockets instead of in replacing worn-out, unsafe equipment. The electrical grid was designed to prevent outages by allowing power from neighboring areas to make up local shortfalls, but a severe problem anywhere can cause it to have the opposite effect, spreading an outage like the flu at a crowded convention. I think it was in 2003 when improper management of the intercity grid caused the far larger NE power outage in the "New England" states. That one was blamed on "reactive power," meaning electricity batting back and forth without being used exceeding the current capacity of the lines, switches, transformers, and circuit breakers. Certainly the big electrical power bosses could try to evade responsibility for this by "false-flagging" the outage as having been caused by an outside attack. With massive public campaigns against FERC, gas fracking, pipelines, and energy export, the timing could not be better for a false-flag operation on their part, turning off power to tens of thousands and blaming their enemies. If this outage was caused by their own sloppy maintainance, than they were caught by surprise and were not ready. A deliberate false-flag outage would probably have a smoothly running propaganda machine operating while the executives pulled the breakers. I've sure WTOP's continuous coverage would be part of that machine.