Power cuts, Black outs hit big areas of Germany and France
Pastor Dale Morgan
Sunday November 5, 4:58 PM Reuters
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Power cuts, Black outs hit big areas of Germany and France*
BERLIN (Reuters) - Power cuts temporarily plunged homes in some of the
most heavily populated parts of Germany and France into darkness
overnight due to shortages in output, authorities said on Sunday.
A spokesman for a French union said the outage was the worst to hit
France in 30 years, while at least four German federal states --
accounting for around half the country's 82 million inhabitants -- were
also affected.
French radio said that the power outage originated on the German side
following a surge in demand for electricity due to cold weather, and
that parts of Belgium and Italy were affected.
A spokesman for German utility RWE Rhein Ruhr said the cuts were caused
by a failure outside his firm's network.
"Not enough power was being generated in the network," he said, adding
that because the supply was on a shared network, the power cuts spilt
over into other areas. He said it was not clear where exactly the
failure had occurred.
The spokesman said more than one million people in the RWE Rhein Ruhr
network were probably affected, including inhabitants in the cities of
Cologne, Essen and Gelsenkirchen, as well as some in the state of
Rhineland-Palatinate further south.
He added that the cuts, which occurred at around 10.30 p.m. (2130 GMT)
on Saturday, had lasted between five minutes and half an hour. There
were no details of any damage.
The states of North Rhine-Westphalia, Bavaria, Saarland and
Baden-Wuerttemberg were definitely affected, police said. The four cover
large areas of western and southern Germany.
Maurice Marion, head of France's CGT trade unions mining and energy
division, said the outage was France's worst in 30 years and had hit the
eastern part of the country in particular. Parts of Paris were affected
by the cuts.
Earlier on Sunday, the French Interior Ministry said it did not know
what had caused the problem. No one was immediately available to comment
at French utility EDF.
In France, the worst outages lasted around 90 minutes, although in many
places the electricity came back within minutes.
No major accidents or crimes had occurred, the ministry and police said.
French media reported some people had got stuck in elevators when the
power went out. About 80 percent of France's electricity is derived from
nuclear power.
(Additional reporting by Jacques Clement and Caroline Jacobs in Paris)