Power outages are an outrage

To residents who lost electricity during the scorching Labor Day weekend, California seemed like a Third World country. Power outages are, after all, common in nations like India, where they can't generate enough electricity to meet the constantly increasing demand.

The state of California isn't, however, an economically deprived or disadvantaged developing nation.

In fact, if California were a country, its economy would be ranked in the top 10 worldwide.

That's why utility companies like Southern California Edison must improve and they must do it quickly.

According to reports, it wasn't a shortage of electricity that caused the blackouts; the overburdened transformers and power lines just couldn't handle the constant heavy consumption. This means that California's power companies have either failed to make improvements or they didn't perform adequate preventive maintenance.

There's no reason why our power providers weren't better prepared for the inevitable increases in consumption that occur during heat waves.

Any prudent company must invest in itself to meet changes in the marketplace. In the case of utility companies, there's also the issue of the public trust.

This problem is going to get worse, not better.

The state of California is an important player in the world's economy, and it deserves an uninterrupted supply of energy.

Innovative and forward-thinking companies would anticipate that overwhelming demands for electricity will occasionally occur, as they did over the holiday weekend.

Sadly, California's utility companies would have failed even more spectacularly had the hot temperatures struck during a normal workweek when thousands of business offices would have been open and also consuming electricity.

Many air conditioners and fans that are used by businesses weren't in operation during the three-day holiday weekend.

So as bad as things were, they could have been worse.