In the world over the past few years, large-scale blackouts happen regularly. For example, a few days ago, no light left 200 thousand inhabitants of Brussels – the failure occurred in one of the substations. The problem was resolved fairly quickly – just over 2 hours. Mainly the blackouts in the world – the consequences of technical problems or weather force majeure, writes UBR.
North America and Canada, 9 November 1965
One of the largest blackouts of the last century experts call this blackout. Then the shortage of electricity has experienced 30 million people, and the event even managed to christen a major failure of the current government in American history.
Photo: National Geographic
The electricity lost in the midst of rush hour, when many office workers have already returned home. The accident caused an invalid relay at one station – the equipment has malfunctioned and sparked off a Domino effect. In total without light remained almost the whole of new York, and with it consumers in new Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode-Alined, new Hampshire and several other States. The hardest hit are those who, at the time the unexpected shutdown was riding the subway – about 800 thousand people.
How it ended:
The power was almost 13 hours. All this time the order on the streets was watched by 1000 guards and 5,000 police officers. All ended peacefully – after Troubleshooting the light returned in almost all offices and homes.
North America and Canada, August 14-15, 2003
After 38 years, almost the same region again became the epicenter of the blackout. At this time the population was forced to spend in the dark for about two days. Unlike the previous case, this blackout was much more expensive and had tragic consequences. So, after all the problem has been rectified, the authorities calculated that in the zone of the trip were 50 million people, 11 of whom died. From an economic point of view, the loss from the accidents amounted to 6 billion dollars.
The people of new York during a blackout. Photo: wikipedia.org
This time, the cause of nepodarok in the system were the high trees that touch power lines. When the system is first signaled a malfunction, the operators ignored the message. Initially it was thought that the onset of darkness triggered a failure of one of the substations in Pennsylvania. In order to determine the real cause, it took months.
How it ended:
After the experts managed to restore the lines, the damage was eliminated. The incident became an occasion for joint work of American and canadian parties on mechanisms to avoid such outages in the future.
Italy, 28 September 2003
Perhaps the scale of this disappearance of electricity would not have been as big if it didn’t have at the midst of the night festival of art, which in that day took place in Rome. As a result, the damage to the line during a storm in Switzerland was the reason that about 3 o’clock in the morning the light disappeared throughout the Italian capital, and has stopped 110 of trains with 30 thousand passengers. Some of the trains were forced to spend on the border about 3.5 hours.
In General, the number of victims in varying degrees, was about 57 million Italians.
How it ended:
The damaged line provides light, Geneva region, managed to recover for a few hours, and the part of electricity consumers in Italy were forced to do without the appliance for 18 hours.
Java and Bali, Indonesia, 18 Aug 2005
The shutdown happened in the middle of the day, the reason was the failure of one of the lines that led to mass shutdown. Without light there are about 120 million people, or half the population of the country (by the way, Indonesia is the fourth country in the world by number of inhabitants). Life and work has stopped, even in the capital Jakarta, were disrupted almost all flights land and air transportation.
How it ended:
Full repair of the mains took about a day, and after a while the government held the summit, whose main purpose was to develop ways to improve the reliability of the electric systems of the country.
Germany, France, Italy and Spain, November 4, 2006
This blackout became one of the largest in Europe and affected about 15 million inhabitants from 4 countries. The epicenter of the shutdown was Germany. According to media reports, the jump in voltage and then disabling provoked the actions of the power company that turned off the high voltage line to across the river EMS could pass a cruise ship. Company officials said that such actions do not lead to problems, but not this time. Later officials said that Europe was on the verge of an energy catastrophe.
How it ended:
Damage managed to eliminate quickly enough. All the time while electricity was out, rescuers had to rescue people from the elevators and stopped trains.
Brazil and Paraguay, 10-11 November 2009
The lack of electricity was a surprise to residents of both countries as disabling a power plant on the border between the States nobody could have imagined. According to one version, the culprit was bad weather, and on the other – the actions of hackers. However, the WikiLeaks documents have not confirmed this assumption.
One way or another, but because of the shutdown of the station plunged into the darkness of 67 million people, and the lack of street lighting caused the number of accidents.
How it ended:
It seems that the authorities of Brazil and Paraguay were seriously concerned about the incident and suspected hackers. Maybe that’s why after the accident was completely modernized system of access to transmission lines – is now the right of control had only a few experts using voice commands.
Chenzhou, China, January-February 2008
Perhaps one of the longest blackouts in history, the elimination of which took about a month, and victims were 4.6 million people.
Photo: china.org.cn
Many Chinese were forced to meet one of the major holidays of the year – Chinese New year – in complete darkness. Witnesses said that they had to walk for hours in the cold water. The cause of the accident in the power system caused by the lingering winter storms.
How it ended:
In the end, all lines were restored. However, according to official data, during repairs killed 11 electricians.
Washington, DC, USA, April 7, 2015
The consequences of a large-scale blackout 2 years ago felt the power of the States. From-for explosion on one of substations without light there are many administrative buildings in the capital of America and its suburbs. In addition, the work stopped metro station, and passengers had to get out of the subway on foot on the non-working escalators.
How it ended:
The light this time managed to return quickly enough. However, after the electricity came back in homes and offices, because of a power surge there was a fire in one of the buildings of the local Museum.
India, January 2, 2001
The largest blackouts of the past few years occurred in India. The first one happened 15 years ago and left in the dark for 230 million people. The reason was the accident at the substation, and blamed weather conditions and the use of outdated equipment. As a result, the country stopped the work of railway transport, many businesses and companies.
How it ended:
The recovery took about 20 hours.
India, July 30-31, 2012
Large-scale blackouts in recent history occurred just under 5 years ago – affected 670 million people throughout India, representing about 9% of the population. The epicenter was 22 of the Indian state.
Photo: Public Radio International
Because of the disappearance of electrical supply under the ground in the trap were hundreds of miners, stopped transportation, and in medical institutions cancelled all operations. The cause of the accident was human negligence, the excess power consumption by the residents and the weak technical equipment of the networks.
How it ended:
The incident has provoked widespread discussion of serious problems in the energy industry and also raised questions about overuse of the light by some States on the growing needs of the population. The authorities have promised to take the necessary action, but urged to invest in the energy complex of the country.
