By Heath Knakmuhs
Last week's significant blackout stretching across Southern California, Arizona, and Mexico serves as a stark reminder that the productivity and energy security of our nation remains highly vulnerable to the shortcomings of an aging energy infrastructure.Not unlike the August 2003 blackout that left approximately fifty million people across the eastern United States and Canada without power, last week's blackout is said to have started when a single transmission line in Arizona tripped off line. This time a utility worker's misstep, instead of an improperly-maintained tree, is to be blamed for shuttering businesses, stores, restaurants, and schools, while causing endless traffic gridlock throughout the Southland. This cascading outage left approximately four million people across two states and northwestern Mexico in the dark. Without the Pacific Ocean serving as a barrier to the further spread of this disturbance, the economic impact and scope of this outage may have been significantly greater.
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