Blackout hits millions in India

NEW DELHI – A massive power cut blacked out northern India yesterday, leaving more than 300 million people without power, shutting down water plants and stranding hundreds of trains in the worst outage in a decade.

Power Minister Sushilkumar Shinde said the entire northern grid collapsed for six hours shortly after 02h00, causing chaos in nine states including the capital New Delhi.The cut severely disrupted transport networks as around 300 passenger trains ground to a halt, requiring the deployment of diesel engines to pull them to safety, railways officials said.In New Delhi, metro services started up an hour late and were operating at only 25 per cent capacity for most of the morning, while traffic lights also went down causing snarls and lengthy tailbacks in the early rush hour.Major hospitals and airports in the region were able to function normally on emergency back-up power, officials said.’As soon as there was a disruption, all our essential services like flight arrivals and departures, and check-in were shifted to our back-up system,’ a spokesman at New Delhi’s international airport said.The Delhi water board said the capital’s seven water treatment plants were shut down by the blackout, but five were back in operation by mid-morning.The northern grid covers a vast region that is home to 28 per cent of India’s 1.2 billion population, and includes the states of Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh.’It is an accident, a failure,’ Shinde, the federal power minister, told reporters, adding that a special committee was being set up to probe the precise trigger for the blackout. – Nampa-AFP

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