Power outage strikes much of Washington, D.C., including the White House

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The U.S. Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Reuters)

A power outage reportedly struck much of Washington, D.C., Tuesday morning.

The U.S. State Department, White House, Capitol and Justice Department were among the buildings that lost power.

A White House spokesperson said that backup generators kicked in initially after the outage, according to a tweet from Mark Knoller, a CBS News correspondent.

The Department of Energy, which is responsible for the nation’s power, was also affected by the outage. That fact did not go unnoticed in the Twittersphere.

Other areas throughout the D.C. metro area, including the University of Maryland in College Park, went dark.

“There is a campus-wide power outage. Crews are working on addressing the problem. Thank you for your patience,” university President Wallace D. Loh tweeted.

Shortly after, Loh explained that there was a problem with the electric feed to the campus and that Pepco, the main electricity service provider for D.C., was working on the problem.

At least one class at the university’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism decided to move its discussion outside.

A congressional aide said a backup generator was helping the U.S. Capitol complex to continue operations, according to Reuters.

The Washington Metro said that some metro stations in the nation’s capital resorted to emergency lighting, though all remained open. Commuters were asked to be cautious when entering a dark station.

As expected, plenty of people took to Twitter to crack wise about the outage. Some even suggested that this sort of incident could provide fodder for a film storyline.

The Washington Post reported that D.C. utilities and homeland security officials were investigating and that “an explosion at a southern Maryland electrical facility is believed to have caused the power surge that temporarily knocked out power to the White House and much of downtown Washington.”