The drama surrounding the blackout during Super Bowl XLVII continues. Though commissioner Roger Goodell has said that the 34-minute power outage won't have an effect on the venue as the future host of Super Bowls, there are still plenty of questions as to what actually went wrong and whether or not something could have been done to prevent it.
Super Bowl blackout: NFL warned of potential power outage in October
The NFL was warned of a potential power outage in the Superdome in October, months before the Super Bowl took place.
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Prior knowledge is the first step to prevention and according to the Associated Press, a memo dated Oct. 15 saw state officials warning the NFL about the electrical feeders that connect incoming power from utility lines to the stadium.
The memo aid that the feeders showed decay and “a chance of failure.” It also stated that Entergy New Orleans, the company that provides power to the Superdome, had “concerns regarding the reliability of the Dome service from Entergy’s connection point to the dome.”
According to the AP report, stadium authorities then authorized spending nearly $1 million on improving the wiring, including more than $600,000 on the feeder cable system. This work was done in December, with plenty of advance to test for the Super Bowl.
It appears that the work done to the feeders was not the cause of the outage, however. The official word from Entergy and stadium officials remains that an “abnormality” occurred where the stadium equipment intersects with the feed from Entergy, which tripped the breaker.
So it’s now clear that there were issues prior to the game actually being played, but it also looks as though the proper steps were taken to rectify the issues that were discovered, at least that’s the official word.
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