thanks everyone for input, directions, questions etc. I really enjoy having customer feedback even in the hard times like today.
Yes there was a bit of a chain of events, and one thing triggered the rest. i will release it all publicly but in a document sometime tomorrow after I've relaxed and let my heart settle from this, but it boiled down to the 2nd circuit I used was in the panel on the wrong phase of power by the electrician. the subpanel is actually a multi breaker panel fed from the UPS. At the UPS the subpanel breaker set tripped because of this circuit I moved to last night being on the wrong phase overloaded one of the 3 phases, and it caused them all to trip.
With my approval the elecrician put blank breakers in the remaining spots in the panel so that a phase cannot be overloaded like that again.
This was NOT US overloading our circuits, we run at 80% or less spec, it was due to the panel breaker hookup being on the wrong phase to begin with, since we are not elecrictians we do not generally double check their work but I think I will ask and verify in future circuit installs in any case!