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Power station problem in Maryland caused outages across DC

A security guard turn visitors away from the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum in Washington, Tuesday, April 7, 2015, after widespread power outages cause many of the buildings along the National Mall to shut down temporarily. Widespread power outages affected the White House, State Department, Capitol and other sites across Washington and its suburbs Tuesday afternoon — all because of an explosion at a power plant in southern Maryland, an official said. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
A security guard turn visitors away from the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum in Washington, Tuesday, April 7, 2015, after widespread power outages cause many of the buildings along the National Mall to shut down temporarily. Widespread power outages affected the White House, State Department, Capitol and other sites across Washington and its suburbs Tuesday afternoon — all because of an explosion at a power plant in southern Maryland, an official said. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik) A security guard turn visitors away from the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum in Washington, Tuesday, April 7, 2015, after widespread power outages cause many of the buildings along the National Mall to shut down temporarily. Widespread power outages affected the White House, State Department, Capitol and other sites across Washington and its suburbs Tuesday afternoon — all because of an explosion at a power plant in southern Maryland, an official said. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

By Associated Press 3 min read

WASHINGTON (AP) – The U.S. Capitol building was running on a generator for a time, and Metro trains kept moving, but on emergency power.

Tourists were evacuated from museums. At the State Department during the daily press briefing, spokeswoman Marie Harf was forced to finish her comments in the dark. In the White House, President Barack Obama barely noticed Tuesday’s disruption.

All this was caused by problems at an electrical station 35 miles southeast of Washington that caused widespread power outages on Tuesday.

The mechanical failure occurred shortly before 1 p.m. Tuesday at a transfer station in Charles County, Maryland, that is controlled by utilities serving Washington and southern Maryland. Homeland security officials in Washington and Maryland said there was an explosion at the station, although the two utilities, Pepco and the Southern Maryland Electric Cooperative, could not immediately confirm that there was a blast or fire. No one was injured, the utilities said.

Many of the outages were brief, but some were longer and forced evacuations. Officials said a mechanical failure at a transfer station led to the outages, and terrorism was not suspected. Tens of thousands of customers lost power.