Italy blacked out by nationwide power cut

A massive blackout hit Italy today, cutting power to millions of Italians who woke up to find their phone lines silent and their televisions black.

Drivers struggled through streets without traffic lights and trains wee stranded on the tracks.

Most of Italy’s 57 million people were left without power for hours, compared to the 50 million affected during the August 14 blackout in north America.

Power returned to the north in the morning and to parts of Rome briefly around noon (1000 GMT) before shutting off again.

Authorities urged citizens not to panic.

“Everybody stay calm,” said civil defence chief Guido Bertolaso. “There is no major crisis at the moment.”

At a darkened cafe in Rome, manager Massimo Purificato complained that without his espresso machine and the ability to make croissants, he could not keep a customer in the place.

“All the ice creams are melting. It’s a disaster,” he said. “We’ve lost money and clients. We’ve lost a lot of business.”

Many Italian reports said the power cut originated in France, which provides part of Italy’s electricity. French officials denied responsibility.

An official of the Italian power company Enel said electricity connections in the Alps between Italy and France broke down before dawn for unknown reasons. Enel began using domestic hydroelectric plants to return power to some parts of the nation, the official said.

The outages hit at 3.25am.(0125 GMT), state radio said. Regional electricity company ACEA said power went out everywhere across the nation, except on the island of Sardinia.

Carlo Andrea Bollino, the director of the Italian electrical network, ruled out terrorism. “All the data we have now is in line with a technical failure,” Mr Bollino said.

Hospitals ran on generators, while traffic accidents occurred across the nation as drivers raced toward junctions without traffic lights. Airports cited major delays and cancelled flights.

Some 110 trains were stopped across the nation with 30,000 passengers on board, and hundreds of people were stranded during an all-night festival in Rome that kept museums and restaurants open around the clock.

The city had encouraged Romans and tourists to use public transport, but many stranded travellers ended up sleeping in the out-of-service subway stations.

By mid-morning, electricity returned to Venice, Milan and other northern cities. Rural areas, as well as Rome and all regions south of the capital, remained largely without power for several more hours.

The French state-run exporter of electricity insisted that it was not responsible for the Italian power outage, while the French Interior Ministry said it had no immediate reports of any outages in France.

“The origin of the incidence of electricity outage in Italy is not French,” said Patrick Larradet, a spokesman for a subsidiary of French utility EDF that is responsible for delivering electricity to other countries.

Mr Larradet said there was a brief outage on the French border with Italy at about 3.25am. – “surely a result of storms” in the region. Service was quickly restored, he said.

At peak times, France ships the equivalent of about two nuclear power plants’ worth of electricity to Italy, Mr Larradet said.

Power also went out for about three hours in Geneva, Switzerland, earlier in the night, but it was unclear if it was related to the Italian outage.

Trains from Switzerland were stopping at the southern Swiss town of Chiasso, unable to enter Italy because of the outage, said Viasuisse, Switzerland’s travel information office. Most of Europe’s trains are electric.

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.

Last week, nearly four million people in eastern Denmark and southern Sweden were without electricity for more than three hours after a rare power outage hit parts of Scandinavia.

A massive blackout hit vast swathes of the northern and eastern United States and parts of Canada on August 14, affecting 50 million people and shutting down more than 100 power plants.

On August 28, power briefly went out in parts of London and south east England, shutting off traffic lights in the British capital and stranding hundreds of thousands of people on Tubes and trains.

Authorities are still investigating the US and British outages.