Miami, mystical land of swamps, hurricanes and rich South American guys in silk shirts, experienced a major blackout yesterday. The power outage was caused by a fire and not, as Miamians almost always suspect, because religious extremists are so concerned with partying in the city where the heat is on, all night on the beach ‘til the break of dawn:

The outage was caused by a fire at Florida Power & Light’s Flagami substation — not in the utility’s nuclear plant at Turkey Point, as reported earlier by some media outlets, FPL President Armando Olivera said during an evening news conference.

Both nuclear reactors at Turkey Point tripped off as a safety measure, taking a plant that supplies power to more than 450,000 homes almost instantly off-line and causing a shortage that affected other parts of the power grid, he said.

But the problems at Turkey Point were a consequence of the initial failure, not the originating cause, FPL said.

”This failure is in no way a safety issue,” said Aletha Player, a company spokeswoman.

Face it, peeps. You can buy the cutest new Hermes bag and go tanning at Yoyi or Kiki’s house until your skin starts falling away in pieces, you can straight-iron your hair and throw up your Chicken Kitchen for the next two weeks, but that still won’t make you important enough for terrorists to take notice. We heard Eddie / Chris / Carlos / Nick at Columbus totally thinks you’re super cute, though.

FPL: Fire at substation was the cause [The Miami Herald]