The city fired up its emergency operations center about 6:30 p.m. Friday, shortly after officials were notified that much of O'ahu was without power.

The center remained open through the night to coordinate firefighters, police and other first responders, taking in minute-by-minute feeds from the field. There was a flurry of activity at the center well into the morning, with updates being provided by HECO officials as power was slowly restored to areas and as responders handled 911 calls.

City spokesman Bill Brennan said the center provided a "coordinated city response that went very smoothly," with Mayor Mufi Hannemann overseeing operations until 2:45 a.m. The mayor was back at the center later in the day to hear from agency representatives.

The city's emergency operations center, in the basement of the Frank F. Fasi Municipal Building, is designed as a hub to coordinate the work of first responders. The city most recently opened its emergency operations center on Dec. 11, after torrential rains caused widespread flooding on O'ahu. In that incident, the city opened the center nearly three hours after heavy rain started falling and appeared to be caught off guard early on.

This time around, things seemed to have gone more smoothly, officials said.

Shortly after the operations center was activated, responding agencies were delivering reports to the mayor, who headed there from a workout at the YMCA shortly after the blackout.

When the lights went out, Gov. Linda Lingle headed to the state emergency operations center, where she got updates from state officials about airports, roads and other concerns. She also held several conference calls with reporters from the Diamond Head center.

Before the blackout, she said, she was having a Hanukkah dinner with friends in Kahala.

The governor remained at the operations center until about midnight.

At a news conference yesterday at the city emergency operations center, Hannemann commended first responders for their work in the wake of the massive outage and said their response was well organized. "Our first responders have done an excellent job," he said.