massive power outage sweeps across Italy

[eek]

:wtf:

Massive Power Outage Sweeps Across Italy

From the Associated Press

Sunday September 28, 2003 9:59 PM
By TOM RACHMAN

Associated Press Writer

ROME (AP) - A storm-tossed tree branch that hit Swiss power lines helped trigger a massive blackout in almost all of Italy, trapping thousands on trains and forcing the pope to use a backup generator to proclaim his new cardinals. The outage, blamed for three deaths, underlined the dangers of Italy's reliance on imported power.

It was Italy's worst power outage since World War II. Most of the country's 58 million people were affected - more than in North America's biggest blackout, which left 50 million people without power in Canada and the United States on Aug. 14.

As in the North American blackout, there was initially confusion about the cause and finger-pointing among neighboring countries. With scant domestic supply and swelling public demand, Italy imports most of its electricity.
(snip)

Last week, nearly 4 million people in eastern Denmark and southern Sweden were without electricity for more than three hours after a rare power outage plagued parts of Scandinavia.
:wtf:

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 British outage, as well as the Aug. 14 blackout in Canada and the United States.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003


(more)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-3203385,00.html

[Maple]

1. Crappy weather

and electical grids not updated in years will do that.

[eek]

2. fishy!

USA, UK, Denmark, Sweden, Italy

That is an awful lotta 'rare" massive power outages.

Didn't it turn out that the US and UK power grides were operated by the same company?

Wonder if any of these other ones are as well?

[patdem]

3. I would not be all tinfoily hat if it had not happened all within

two months...how many people this summer have been without electricity for and extended time...isabel is a different story, but all those outtages in such a short time...and Al Queda did claim the American outtage...practicing to put the 'major world cities' out all at the same time??? :scared::tinfoilhat:

[Maple]

4. And all the bad or unusual weather

happened in the last couple of months.

[ronzo]

6. Yeah,

that's very coincidental. Somebody's getting into the computers, the question is....

[w4rma]

5. Berlusconi (who, IMHO, is a neo-Mussolini) probably deregulated

Italy's power utilities.

It seems the neo-fascists no longer make the trains run on time.

[KittyWampus]

7. Synchronicity

Strange...

[newyawker99]

8. kick