Houston Blames Water Outage on Failure of Backup Transformer

Houston’s citywide water outage stemmed from the failure of two electrical transformers at a key treatment complex that prevented officials from turning on backup generators.

The outage that shuttered schools, delayed surgeries and forced some restaurants and other businesses to close their doors in the fourth-largest US city on Monday may stretch into a second day, given that initial results of safety tests won’t be known until 3 a.m. local time