A power outage responsible for shutting an Orange County data center was caused by a circuit breaker failing in a new $1.2 million uninterruptible power supply system, installed over the weekend.
More than 800 government computers were affected, including terminals for welfare and food stamps, taxes, internal county e-mail and toll road violation checks.
The power outage began at 8:55 a.m., at the data center located at 1400 S. Grand in Santa Ana.
According to a source familiar with the data center, the system is spread between two Southern California Edison grids, to allow for back-up communications. For some reason, the system did not move over to its back-up battery power.
The outage left county operators thumbing through phone books to connect calls. The website that gives the public county-based information was also down. Workers at the Superior Court say their Internet service was "slow," but courts remained in session.
According to Lt. Fred Fuery, the Sheriff's Department emergency operations were not affected, only the department's Internet service.
Fire authority personnel say they are on a separate computer system and were able to continue emergency service.
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According to Fatish Ajmani, IT workers expect to continue through Monday afternoon, trying to bring the system back online.
