Outage

America Online Inc. had egg on its face yesterday, as the world's leading online service saw its worldwide system crash for at least 14 hours after a routine software upgrade went awry.The outage began about 4 a.m., a time Dulles, Va.-based AOL chose to install new software during scheduled maintenance because relatively few of its 6.2 million subscribers are online. But it lasted throughout the day and into the evening."If it isn't fixed by [last] night, there's going to be hell to pay over there," said Mark Mooradian, senior analyst at the New York-based Internet consulting firm Jupiter Communications.

Hundreds of workers in downtown Annapolis went home early yesterday after a midday power failure immobilized scores of businesses and government offices. Officials at Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. said that water had seeped into an underground electrical box, disrupting power to buildings around West Street, Calvert Street and Church Circle. Power was restored to 96 percent of the affected customers by late afternoon. But BGE spokesman Steven Unglesbee said yesterday evening that the remaining 4 percent would have to wait until work crews found the source of the water, pumped it dry and repaired the electrical line.

We've all become seduced, in a sense, by the seeming infallibility of television, in that, while you may not like the program that's on, you never doubt that the program will be there.But the mad scramble that became Channel 2's coverage of the pre-Preakness festivities yesterday serves as a reminder that television, of all our big modern contrivances, is the newcomer, and perhaps the most vulnerable to failure.A power failure, caused by a transformer explosion, forced the tone of the coverage to shift out of celebratory mode into how to thrive in a mini-crisis.

Catonsville Middle School in Baltimore County closed at 11:45 a.m. today due to a power outage, according to officials. Originally published January 12, 2006, 11:38 AM EST

Jim Nottingham, director of switching in Northern Maryland for Chesapeake & Potomac Telephone Co., says trying to find the culprit to Wednesday's massive phone outage is a bit like "caring for a sick child. You want to stay up until it's well, hold its hand, take its temperature, do whatever you have to do to make it better."By most estimates, that could take a while.Five days after the worst outage in C&P's history, technicians still don't know what caused the local phone networks in Maryland, Washington, Virginia and West Virginia to overload and shut down.

Day classes at the Essex campus of the Community College of Baltimore County were canceled today due to a power outage. Power was restored to all buildings by late this afternoon, and the campus reopened for evening classes at 5:45 p.m., according to the school's Web site. Originally published February 20, 2006, 6:23 PM EST

Power was knocked out to about 7,000 customers in the Towson area, including Towson Town Center, around 11:30 a.m. Tuesday because of a problem with a piece of electric distribution equipment, according to Baltimore Gas and Electric spokeswoman Rachael Lighty. All but about 1,000 customers had their power restored by noon, she said. The remaining customers' power was restored by 1:30 p.m. It was about noon when the mall posted an item about the outage on its Twitter page. Other sections of Towson were affected by the outage as well.

A power outage at a Highlandtown transformer shut off traffic lights in parts of Southeast Baltimore yesterday afternoon, snarling rush-hour traffic for about an hour, police said.Traffic signals affected included those in the Eastern Avenue corridor from the city line to Broadway; the Route 40 corridor between Broadway and Ellwood Avenue; and the Fleet Street corridor, said Sgt. Robert Wehner of the Southeastern District."It happened so fast, so unexpectedly," Wehner said of the outage, which occurred about 4: 30 p.m. "It couldn't have happened at a worse time, with everyone trying to go home on a Friday afternoon."

Robbed of the comforts of an air-conditioned commute on the train, Jeff Roberts calmly climbed down the stairs of his Midtown Manhattan office building late yesterday afternoon and readied himself for an eight-mile walk home. Roberts, an AT&T Corp. employee, and thousands of other commuters flooded Gotham's streets after yesterday's power outage, with many seeking refuge on buses, cabs and ferries, the major modes of public transportation still working. "At this point, I'm looking down out the window," Roberts said from his building.

A one-car accident near Gamber yesterday left a Howard County woman dead and two Anne Arundel County women critically injured, state police said.Nola M. Bates, 86, of Rosemary Lane in West Friendship was pronounced dead at the scene.She was a passenger in the back seat of a 1996 Subaru that was southbound on Route 32 near Bird View Road at 2: 20 p.m. when it veered off the road and struck a utility pole, police said.Virginia Langdon, 80, of Sea Horse Court in Annapolis was identified by police as the driver of the Subaru.