Widespread power outages hit Washington, D.C., area

WASHINGTON - The White House, State Department, and Capitol were all affected by widespread power outages across Washington and its suburbs Tuesday afternoon.

The utility company Pepco said the issue was caused by a problem with a transmission line in Charles County, Maryland shortly before 1 p.m. While there was never a loss of permanent supply of electricity to customers, the company says, the dip in voltage cause some buildings to switch to backup power systems.

Within two hours, the company said there were no current supply problems and there were crews onsite investigating the cause.

Law enforcement sources told CBS News Correspondent Jeff Pegues there was a "dip and surge in power to a transfer line in Southern Maryland which was owned by Pepco," but not an explosion at a facility, as some reports suggested.

All signs at the moment suggest the dip and surge was not terrorism related, Pegues reports.

Some outages were brief. Electricity in the White House press briefing room dipped around lunchtime, darkening cubicles and blackening TV screens, but service resumed within seconds.

Power went out at the State Department during the daily press briefing, forcing Deputy Spokesperson Marie Harf to finish her briefing by the light from a cell phone.

Metro tweeted that several stations went on on backup power. The transportation agency tweeted that by 2:45 p.m. power had been restored to all stations, except Bethesda, where there was an escalator outage caused by the power surge. That station was temporarily closed.

University of Maryland officials say their entire campus was affected. University of Maryland President Wallace Loh tweeted that campus would close at 2 p.m. due to the outage.

The Smithsonian tweeted that the outage was affecting some of its museums, and they were evacuated.

Later in the afternoon, Smithsonian tweeted that all of its museums had their power restored and had reopened.

Weather in the area was overcast, but there were no storms.