WASHINGTON (CBSDC/AP) — The White House, State Department and areas throughout D.C. and Maryland lost power Tuesday afternoon due to an explosion at an area power plant. The power went out at the White House for nearly 10 seconds while the State Department conducted its press briefing in the dark. The Justice Department’s power also went down.
State Dept. spokesperson Marie Harf says power is now restored to the main building.
WNEW’S Chuck Carroll reports D.C. Homeland Security officials believe an explosion at a SMECO power facility in southern Maryland caused the outages. They say there is no indication of terrorism behind the outages.
White House press secretary Josh Earnest says Homeland Security has “indicated they don’t currently see a nexus to terrorism or anything like that” in the outages.
University of Maryland’s campus in College Park closed at 2 p.m. due to the outage.
Power has been restored to some residence halls.
