Italy suffers outage similar to those recently occuring in London, Denmark Sweden, and in the United States and Canada on Aug. 14, when 50 million people were left without power.

In Rome, the blackout coincided with an all-night initiative dubbed White Night, a cultural extravaganza boasting of dozens of performances and nighttime visits to museums, galleries and monuments that lured more than one million people onto the streets.

Where else but in Italy, would one million people turn out for a CULTURAL extravaganza!

Roman CELLULAR phones used to ask residents to remain home to ease crisis.

Italy, Switzerland, France and Austria accuse each other as cause of blackout.
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MASSIVE POWER OUTAGE SWEEPS ACROSS ITALY

By Elisabetta Povoledo
New York Times
International Herald Tribune
September 28, 2003

ROME, Sept. 28 — One of the worst power outages in Italy's history left most of the country without electricity for several hours early today, interrupting rail and air traffic, jamming emergency operator phone lines for hours and forcing thousands of Romans into makeshift refuges in subway stations.

At least three people died as a direct result of the blackout, including two elderly women who fell down stairs in separate incidents and another who died from burns caused when a candle set her clothes on fire.

Industry Minister Antonio Marzano said today that the Italian grid was not to blame for an outage that left nearly 57 million people in the dark. He said an investigation into the cause would begin immediately.

The national grid operator GRTN blamed the blackout on a chain reaction that possibly began in Switzerland, and involved France and Austria before crippling electrical power in Italy.

Most of Italy, except for the islands of Sardinia and Capri and several limited areas on the mainland, was hit by the blackout that began at about 3:20 a.m. Power came back to most northern regions in the early morning hours, in some cases before residents even woke up.

Restoring power proved to be more problematic in the nighttime hours and southern regions where several areas remained without electricity late this afternoon.

Though no major incidents were reported, and hospital generators kept equipment running, dozens of people up and down the peninsula were blocked in elevators, some areas were without water, at least 30,000 people were stranded on 110 trains, and thousands more were blocked in subways and trams.

In Rome, the blackout coincided with an all-night initiative dubbed White Night, a cultural extravaganza boasting of dozens of performances and nighttime visits to museums, galleries and monuments that lured more than one million people onto the streets of the capital, according to the mayor's office.

Traffic had already ground to a standstill in what has been described as the worst gridlock in the city's history when it began to rain just minutes before the power outage. Venues that had kept their doors open were forced to shoo visitors out for security reasons and a ghostly legion of wet and bedraggled nocturnal revelers found themselves stranded on the streets.

Some 12,000 people took refuge in Rome's subway stations, which had remained open all night for event. The civil protection agency sent SMS messages to Roman cellular phones asking residents to remain home unless absolutely necessary...

Andrea Bollino, president of GRTN, said on national television that Monday might see some limited power outages and said the grid would be fully operational again by Tuesday. He asked residents to be parsimonious in their electrical consumption until then. "If we all do our part there will be more for everyone," he said.

An official with GRTN said the blackout seemed to have been caused by a domino effect precipitated when a tree came too close to a power line in Switzerland, putting it out of service as French power lines were damaged by a storm raging in southeastern France.

The two events combined virtually isolated Italy, but the official said that this reconstruction was still preliminary and warranted closer examination.

France and Switzerland have confirmed that their power lines were disabled, but categorically refused to accept responsibility for the outage, and dismissed the chain reaction theory.

Rolf Schmid, head of Corporate Communications at ATEL, one of the Swiss providers, said that the kind of interruption experienced in Switzerland at 3 a.m. today, nearly half an hour before the Italian outage, was a common occurrence that consumers were almost never aware of.

"Which is why we can't say that it was an interruption in the Swiss line, otherwise breakdowns would be more common," he said in a telephone interview from his office in Olten, Switzerland. He said he suspected that Italian operators made a wrong decision when coping with the interruption from Switzerland and the difficulties in France. "The Italian reaction was not the right one and it cost them the chain reaction."

Italy imports nearly 17 percent of its electricity, with France and Switzerland, where costs are about a third of national production, its principal suppliers. Criticisms emerged today that this dependency on foreign imports left the country vulnerable to this kind of emergency.

Paolo Scaroni, the chief executive of ENEL, Italy's former national electricity utility that called 10,000 employees into work after the outage, said that Italy's basic problem was that it depended excessively on imported energy, his office said. "I would like my fellow citizens to know that we must build new plants and networks on our territory or the situation will remain the same," The Associated Press quotes Mr. Scaroni as saying.

In a visit to Naples, President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi of Italy reiterated similar thoughts urging that political differences be set aside to ensure that the country build new power stations "to give the country the sources of energy it needs."

The past two months have seen major power breakdowns in London, Denmark and Sweden, and on Aug. 14, 50 million people were left without power in the United States and Canada. Losses incurred by the power failure have yet to be calculated but it is estimated that New York City alone lost more than $1 billion.

Confindustria, Italy's industrial lobby said in a press release that today's emergency was the "dramatic fruit of a long series of errors" arising from the lack of any coherent policy with regards to the production and distribution of energy. Confindustria said that the energy question had become a "national emergency," and urged the government to enact constructive legislation to remedy a situation "that could bring Italy's economy to its knees."

Confcommercio, which represents Italian businesses, said today that an initial estimate of the economic damage suffered by its members was around 120 billion euros, mostly in perishable food and lost earnings.

Massive Power Outage Sweeps Across Italy
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/28/international/europe/28CND-ROME.html?hp

Getty Images: Passengers were left stranded at a train station in Rome after power went out across the country today. 

Associated Press: Residents of Naples, Italy, enjoyed their morning coffee in a candle lit bar after power went out across the country today.