| Nationwide
blackout hits Italy |
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| 58 million people
could be affected; cause of loss unknown |
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ASSOCIATED
PRESS |
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| ROME, Sept. 28
— Power went out across Italy before dawn Sunday, plunging the nation
into darkness, police and news reports said. Authorities did not
immediately know the cause. |
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THERE WAS no
official tally of customers without power, but early reports indicated
most of Italy’s 58 million people could be affected. The Aug. 14 blackout
in the eastern United States affected 50 million people.
The first Italian power outages were reported around 4 a.m.
local time in Rome, where the city was celebrating an all-night festival
with museums and restaurants open around the clock.
Later, the national electricity company ACEA said power was
out across the nation, the ANSA news agency said.
“As far as we know it’s all across Italy,” police official Franca
Sesti Miraglia said in Rome.
“We don’t know
the cause yet,” she said.
ANSA said that
hundreds of people attending the all-night “White Night” festivities in
Rome were stuck in subways due to the blackout. Police could not
immediately confirm the report.
“We’re not
aware of anything really serious. There are some problems,” Sesti Miraglia
said, without giving details. “With the ’White Night,’ there were many
people out.”
In the northern city of Milan,
civil defense official Pasquale Aversa said a little power had returned
there by 7 a.m.
“In certain parts of the
city, electricity has already returned, and that is true also in some
areas around Milan,” he said. “Obviously, there are problems with having a
city in the dark. But given the situation we’re in, it’s going
well.”
He added that hospitals and other
emergency centers were using generators. Top civil defense officials will
likely hold a meeting in Rome on the matter soon, Aversa said, but he had
no further details.
INFORMATION
BLACKOUT
Information on the
outage was hard to come by: The blackout cut access to television and
radio, while some government agencies’ phone lines were constantly busy or
not responding early Sunday morning.
There
were no immediate reports of outages in neighboring countries. |
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Italy was hit with partial power cuts in June, when people —
suffering in the scorching summer — overloaded the system with air
conditioners and other electricity-guzzling appliances. That was the first
time in more than 20 years that the national operator of the electrical
grid ordered power cuts.
Authorities have
repeatedly said that power demand is growing faster than supply and that
imported electricity would not make up for insufficient production in the
long term.
By 7 a.m. local time (1 a.m. EDT)
power was still out in the capital, and authorities had not yet announced
an explanation.
A massive blackout hit vast
swaths of the northern and eastern United States and parts of Canada on
Aug. 14, affecting 50 million people and shutting down more than 100 power
plants.
On Aug. 28, power briefly went out
in parts of London and southeast England, shutting off traffic lights in
the British capital and stranding hundreds of thousands of people on
subways and trains.
Authorities are still
investigating the U.S. and British outages.
©
2003 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be
published, broadcast, rewritten or
redistributed.
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