Power outage strands thousands at Atlanta airport
December 18, 2017 by admin
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Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in Atlanta lost power on Sunday.
USA TODAY
A major power outage halted air traffic Sunday at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, grounding all of the hub’s outgoing flights and halting incoming traffic for tens of thousands of travelers hoping to land at the world’s busiest airport.
The disruption, coming just eight days before Christmas, promises to wreak havoc on one of the busiest travel weeks of the year.
The outage, reported shortly after noon ET, forced travelers out of the darkened terminal and into an icy rain for hours, witnesses reported. It stranded others on Atlanta’s tarmac as they waited to get off of incoming flights.
Others were stranded on electric trams that run between terminals — they had to be rescued by firefighters.
As utility crews worked to fix the outage, passengers described a chaotic scene inside a smoke-filled terminal.
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Traveler Olivia Dorfman told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution she was about to board a flight home to Indiana when the lights went out. Ten minutes later, she said, “a buzzer went off in the background — that has been going on for over an hour and every so often bright lights flash in the ceiling.”
Dorfman said smoke filled the area near a gate in the D Concourse. She said at least one other passenger described the acrid smoke as that of an electrical fire.
At various times, airport workers tried to herd passengers toward the smoky area and away from it, Dorfman said. “This has been very bizarre. No one seems to know what they’re doing.”
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) ordered a ground stop for flights into the airport, holding them at departure airports across the world. The FAA said departures also were delayed.
Please let the people standing outside on the tarmac back into the building, it is too cold outside.
— Audrey Owens (@audreyowensvb) December 17, 2017
Several airlines, including Southwest and Delta, said they were canceling flights due to the power outage. In a statement, Delta said it had canceled more than 450 flights and was “working to deplane customers from aircraft that have not been able to park at a gate due to the outage.”
Country music star Travis Tritt tweeted late Sunday afternoon that he was stuck in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., because of the outage. ”How on earth can the busiest airport on earth have power down and no backup generators up and running?” he wrote. “This makes ATL airport designers look dumb as hell!”
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Late Sunday, Georgia Power said it the outage was likely caused by an electrical fire at an underground facility. It expected to have electricity restored to the airport by midnight.
Hartsfield-Jackson last year handled 104,171,935 passengers, the most of any airport worldwide.
In a statement the FAA said the airport’s tower could operate normally, but that departures were delayed “because airport equipment in the terminals is not working.”
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Airport officials said the outage began just before 1 p.m. ET.
Malou Cadavillo and her 16-month-old granddaughter sat on a motionless luggage carousel waiting for a car seat after making it to baggage claim by the light of fellow passengers’ mobile phones.
Cadavillo told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that her grandsons, 7 and 11, were uneasy. One of them added, “I hope there’s no monsters down here.”
Contributing: Michael King, WXIA-TV, Atlanta.
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