Massive Friday the 13th Power Failure hts Washington DC - Puts Whitehouse on Back-up power

Electrical power was restored in Washington on Friday after a widespread outage and subway fire darkened downtown for nearly three hours and snarled traffic during the morning rush hour.

The Department of Homeland Security said there appeared to be no link to terrorism.

Pepco electric company officials said they did not yet know why a power substation failed at 10th St. N.W. around 7:30 a.m., leaving about 11,000 downtown customers in the dark.

A fire in the downtown Metro Center stop started around the same time, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority said.

Pepco and WMATA officials said they did not know if the power outage and the fire were related.

WMATA said it extinguished the fire and had restored service by 8:30, but warned commuters to expect delays of up to an hour.

The power outage forced the nearby Dupont Circle station to close because its long escalators were not moving. Several other downtown stops were darker than usual because they were running on backup power, WMATA said.

Temperatures were expected to approach 90 degrees Fahrenheit (31 degrees Celsius) later in the day, which could have disrupted work if government and private-sector offices were without air conditioning.

The Treasury Department lost power during the outage, and parts of the White House ran on backup power. President George W. Bush was on a trip to Europe.

Congress, the Supreme Court and the State Department had power during the outage.

Buses and cars battled to get through major intersections where street lights were not working, until police arrived to direct traffic. At one intersection, pedestrians screamed at cars to stop and let the elderly cross the streets.

A police spokeswoman said there had been no reports of injuries or accidents related to the outage.