White House briefly loses power during widespread outages in Washington, D.C.

ABOVE: State Department spokesperson conducts press conference in the dark following power outage

TORONTO – Authorities were investigating Tuesday what caused sporadic but widespread power outages throughout the American capital, including a brief outage at the White House as well as the State Department and Capitol building.

Officials told the Associated Press that the outages were caused by an explosion at a power plant in Maryland.

Robyn Johnson, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Safety in Washington said approximately 8,000 customers in the area were without power.

NBC News reported that Homeland Security officials don’t believe criminal activity or terrorism caused the outages.

Reports of widespread outages began filtering out on Twitter shortly after noon on Tuesday including one, which lasted just a few seconds, at the White House.

Power also went out at the state department, several Metro train stations, the entire University of Maryland campus and the Smithsonian.

The outages also affected the unveiling of a stamp dedicated to Maya Angelou in Washington, D.C. Oprah Winfrey was the keynote speaker Tuesday morning as the U.S. Postal Service unveiled the stamp at the Warner Theatre in Washington.

– With files from The Associated Press