Jan. 10–Las Vegas' largest convention, the CES tech show, had its plug pulled today when the Las Vegas Convention Center experienced a power outage for more than an hour.
The outage, which hit the south and central halls of the convention center, occurred about 11:40 a.m., sending thousands of attendees outside.
"There's an isolated outage at the facility and we're continuing to look into the cause," said Maria Phelan, a spokeswoman for the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority. Officials subsequently said a transformer failed as a result of condensation from recent heavy rains.
CES sent out a message via Twitter at 11:49 a.m. acknowledging the outage and encouraging attendees to move to other halls. The hashtag "CESBlackOut" began trending on Twitter shortly after the power outage.
At 12:38 p.m., the CES Twitter account announced that NV Energy had addressed the issue and was in the process of restoring power. "We will continue to restrict access until full power has been restored," the message said.
The power was restored by shortly after 1 p.m.
Robert Ilas of Corona, Calif., said he arrived at the convention center as people were being escorted out of the building, leaving him to wonder what was going on.
"I knew something was obviously wrong, but with so many people out here, the only way I found out was through a push notification on the CES app," Ilas said.
Ilas was feverishly trying to reach people with whom he had appointments to see if he could salvage his day here or move to another convention sites. "As soon as I hear back from my clients, I'll figure out what I'm going to do," he said.
