LOS ANGELES-Southern California was hit with its first deliberate power blackouts since World War II on Monday, and commercial and residential utility users are bracing for another round of sudden outages today.

The lights went out in office towers, shopping centers, homes and other buildings in more than a dozen Southland cities yesterday, from parts of Los Angeles’ trendy Westside all the way down to communities in San Diego. Hundreds of stores and restaurants were forced to close, some people were trapped in elevators, and traffic in many areas ground to a halt as signals stopped working.

The scene was repeated in parts of Northern California, as well. In all, power officials say energy was cut to about 1.3 million customers statewide. The outages ranged from several minutes to more than two hours.

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