Large Blackout Strikes Southern Florida

A little after 1:00 pm EST today, much of southern Florida lost electricity. CNN began reporting shortly afterward that the blackout affected a region stretching from Daytona in the north to the Florida Keys in the south, impacting the lives of millions of people. The TV news network said that a mix of eight regular and nuclear power plants were affected by the outage.

The blackout has knocked out communications, traffic lights, rail lines, and other vital infrastructure components. Miami International Airport lost power for about a half hour before backup resources kicked in.

Det. Robert Williams, a spokesperson for Miami-Dade County, told CNN, "It has been raining pretty hard, but if that's the cause of the outage, I couldn't really tell you."

A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security told CNN that the incident had nothing to do with terrorism. "There is no indication of a nexus to terrorism at this time," Laura Keehner said. "[W]e will continue to monitor the situation."

Early speculation pointed to an initial failure at Florida Power and Light's (FPL) Turkey Point nuclear facility near Homestead.

As of 2:30 pm, FPL said that some systems were beginning to come back on line.