Seems strange that an airport emergency power back-up system was unable to cope...one imagines that every major airport has some form of standby power that operates outside the mains system. There is a form of aux power but seems to be just for peak demands times.
http://www.ecmweb.com/content/multip...rgency-systems
This outage seems to have been confined to the airport so the reported fire to an underground facility seems to have effected both mains and emergency power distribution.
Emergency power was restored but not all power. Georgia Power spokesman John Kraft said the utility was working to find out the cause of the outage and restore electricity. He could not estimate when that might happen. Spokeswoman Holly Crawford said no areas outside of the airport were affected by the power cut.