Power Failure Brings Italy to Standstill
By REUTERS
Filed at 6:09 a.m. ET
ROME (Reuters) - A nationwide power cut plunged Italy into darkness early Sunday in one of the country's worst blackouts, which authorities blamed on the breakdown of electricity lines from France and Switzerland hit by storms.
The early morning blackout hit virtually the entire country, stranding more than 30,000 train passengers, forcing airlines to cancel flights and leaving people sleeping on the streets.
There were no reports of fatalities directly linked to the fourth major power breakdown in Western economies in two months.
It was Italy's worst blackout in nearly a decade and hit all of the country except the island of Sardinia and some small pockets of the mainland, officials said.
Eight hours after the power went out, huge sections of the country were still without electricity including Rome, where stranded subway and train passengers slept on the ground.
``It's chaos, and until the electricity comes back on it will continue to be chaos,'' said policeman Fabio Bragazzi, 21, at Rome's main Termini train station.
Italian authorities said the near simultaneous failure of power lines from neighboring Switzerland and France, which provides about one fifth of Italy's electricity at night, triggered the cut at 3:20 a.m. (0120 GMT).
``It was an exceptional, extraordinary event,'' Andrea Bollino, chairman of national grid operator GRTN, told Reuters.
``There was a problem with the connection in Switzerland which then caused a problem with our connection with France and then affected Italy,'' Bollino said.
French authorities said severe storms apparently cut two 400,000 volt lines connecting the two countries. Sunday morning the two lines were reconnected, restoring power to large parts of northern and central Italy.
``The origin of the main failure is not French. There was a failure between Switzerland and Italy around 3 a.m. (0100 GMT),'' said Patrick Larradet, a spokesman for French grid operator RTE.
He said two French power lines came down shortly afterwards, around 3:25 a.m. (1025 GMT) -- most likely due to storms in the region -- but electricity was soon restored.
Power was expected to be up in the rest of Italy by Sunday afternoon, Industry Minister Antonio Marzano said.
``WE'RE NOT HAPPY AT ALL''
The outage brought an early close to an all-night party in the capital where shops, tourist sites and museums were meant to stay open until daybreak. Cash machines in Rome went on the blink.
Patrons in one Rome cafe without power to run the coffee machine turned to liqueur instead.
``We're not happy at all. Everything was fine until about 3:30 a.m. (0130 GMT). Then it all happened at once and now we're angry and wet,'' one sodden party-goer said.
About 110 trains with some 30,000 passengers were stranded when the power went out. ``Almost all trains that were blocked are now brought into the stations,'' a spokesman for the state railway firm said.
Italy, which relies on a constant supply of imported power, especially from France, suffered several power outages over the summer as temperatures soared.
About five million consumers in eastern Denmark and southern Sweden were left in the dark last Wednesday in the worst blackout there in 20 years.
That followed last month's huge outage that left 50 million North Americans without power for up to two days and a shutdown which paralyzed London for several hours.
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