Part of Europe in the dark

[brownie]

From AP:

POWER SHORTAGE LEAVES EUROPE IN THE DARK

By STEPHEN GRAHAM, Associated Press Writer

A power shortage in Germany triggered a cascade of blackouts across Europe, a German electricity said Sunday, halting trains, trapping people in elevators and plunging millions of homes into darkness.

Germany and France were badly hit by the cuts late Saturday. Austria, Belgium, Italy and Spain were also affected, though supplies to most regions were quickly restored. No injuries were reported.

A private Germany company, E.On AG, said the problems began in northwestern Germany, where its network became overloaded, possibly because it shut down a high-voltage transmission line over the Ems River to let a ship pass safely.

E.On said it had shut down transmission lines in the past without causing problems, and that it was still trying to discover what happened this time.

Theo Horstmann, of another German power firm RWE AG, said the shortage had caused substations across Europe to shutdown automatically to prevent further damage.

Swaths of western Germany, including the industrial Ruhr region, were without power for a half-hour, delaying scores of trains for up to two hours, Deutsche Bahn spokesman Achim Stauss said.

Officials said thousands of worried citizens overwhelmed emergency services with telephone calls.

In France, about 5 million people were left without electricity, including many in the capital, Paris. In all, about 15 French regions were affected, firefighters said.

France Info radio quoted French power utility Electricite de France as saying that about 5 million people went without power for about an hour.

The radio reported that the outage, which lasted over an hour in France, did not affect most of the country's extensive public transport network. The radio station quoted an official from the SNCF state-owned rail company as saying only about a dozen regional trains, most of them linking the northern regions and Paris, were delayed between 15 and 40 minutes because of the blackout.

Firefighters in Paris said they had responded to nearly 40 calls from people stuck in elevators.

Roberta Vivenzio, a spokeswoman for the Italian energy company Enel, said the blackout affected areas of Piedmont and Liguria in Italy's northwest, as well as Puglia, the southeastern "heel" of Italy's boot-shaped peninsula.

Italian Premier Romano Prodi told reporters in his home town of Bologna that the incident suggested Europe needed to strengthen its coordination of power supplies.

"My first impression is that there is a contradiction between having European (power) links and not having one European (power) authority," Prodi said. "We depend on each other with being able to help each other, without a central authority."

In Belgium, the region around the port city of Antwerp was the worst affected. Short power cuts were also reported near Ghent and Liege, Erik Deleye from electricity provider Elia told VRT television.

The blackout forced rail companies to use buses and taxis to get passengers stranded at rail stations to their final destinations in Ghent.

Spanish network Red Electrica said areas of Madrid, Barcelona, Zaragoza and the region of Andalucia were similarly affected.

Our place on the Paris Left Bank went totally dark last night. Since we could see plenty of lights on the Right Bank we thought this was a local problem and waited for power to be back. This took about one hour.

It's only this morning we realized the full extent of the problem. Now we call blame all this on the Germans

Any other Yuropeans posters got hit?

[sidewinder]

These clear skies and cold weather over the past week seem to be causing chaos !

So far things are OK over here.

And as long as there's power to rotate my deck, I'm happy !

Edited November 5, 2006 by sidewinder

[Claude]

No problem here in Luxembourg, although all the neighbour countries were regionally affected by the outage.

Damn privatization. Despite all the promises about better service and prices through competition, prices go up and reliability goes down.

Sharon Beder - Thieves in the Night

Edited November 5, 2006 by Claude

[Claude]

According to Spiegel Online, the origin for the european-wide power outage may have been in Papenburg, Germany, where a high voltage electricity line crossing a channel had been shut down to allow the new cruise ship Norvegian Pearl to exit the Papenburg docks safely.

http://www.spiegel.de/panorama/0,1518,446546,00.html

http://www.cruise-ship-report.com/News/101806.htm

[Alexander]

As some of you no doubt recall, we had a similar thing on the Eastern Seaboard of the U.S. a couple of years ago. It's certainly no fun. I hope all of our European posters are all right and that the lights come on soon for those still in the dark!

[brownie]

Alexander, the power outage has been over for hours by now.

Frightening to think that so many countries in Europe went blank because a cruise ship left its docks

Understand that Switzerland which is not part of EU was not affected by the power failure!

[tjobbe]

.....and wait until the fear is back that the Germans put the whole continent into darkness....

ok, it was for 30 mins only, but maybe there is a master plan behind

[Claude]

My first thought was that Putin was demonstrating his might over Europe (like he does with Georgia), but so far he only controls the european natural gas supply ...

[Son-of-a-Weizen]

All these damn cruise ships being built to go bob about in the caribbean, yet there isn't a liner left that makes the Hamburg-New York run. '65 was the last time for me on the 'Bremen' and I'd like to do it again.

Edited November 5, 2006 by Son-of-a-Weizen

[Epithet]

Everyone mark their calendars nine months ahead.

[king ubu]

No problem here, indeed... there are some positive aspects about not being in the EU, but generally I still think it would be better to join.