Return to the Dark Ages during Super Bowl blackout

The Baltimore Ravens were leading the San Francisco 49ers 28-6 when most of the lights in the 73,000-seat building went out with 13:22 left in the third quarter.

Auxiliary power kept the playing field from going totally dark, but escalators stopped working and the concourses were only illuminated by small banks of lights tied in to emergency service.

Philip Allison, a spokesman for Entergy New Orleans, which provides power to the stadium, said power had been flowing into the stadium before the lights failed.

"All of our distribution and transmission feeds going into the Superdome were operating as expected," Allison said.

He said the outage appeared to originate in a failure of equipment maintained by stadium staff. It occurred shortly after Beyonce put on a 12-minute halftime show that featured extravagant lighting and video effects.

On the CBS broadcast, play-by-play announcers Jim Nantz and Phil Simms went silent.

CBS sideline reporter Steve Tasker announced the problem of a "click of the lights" to viewers. Later, the halftime crew anchored by host James Brown returned to fill the time with football analysis. Brown said a power surge caused the outage.

"We lost all power up here at the press box level," Nantz said after power was restored. He and Simms were off the air for most of the 34-minute outage.

The public address announcer said the Superdome was experiencing an interruption of electrical service and encouraged fans to stay in their seats. Some fans did the wave to pass the time. Players milled around on the sidelines, some took a seat on the bench, other on the field.

Officials gathered on the field and appeared to be talking to stadium personnel. Finally, the lights came back on throughout the dome and the game resumed.

"Let's go!" referee Jerome Boger said to the teams.

The NFL said stadium officials were investigating the cause, but there was no immediate word of why the power went out.

"We sincerely apologize for the incident," Superdome spokesman Eric Eagan said.

He told the Associated Press that Superdome technical staff were working more than hour after the outage to determine what caused it but still didn't know.

The outage provided a major glitch to what had been a smooth week for New Orleans, which was hosting its first Super Bowl since 2002 and was eager to show off how the city has rebuilt since Hurricane Katrina.