Blackout Follows Major Blackout

Only two weeks after the massive blackout in the United States and Canada, power went out all of a sudden during the evening rush hour on Thursday in London and some parts of Kent in England, causing massive chaos.

The outage caused serious disruptions, especially to the half million citizens who use railways or subways, as well as to 100,000 to 150,000 residents whose houses were without electricity.

Electricity went out at 6:20 p.m. Thursday (local time). This brought serious disruptions in railway and subway services. Power had been gradually restored half an hour after the outage, but railway and subway operations were not restored fully until late in the night.

Tens of thousands of people thronged in the chaotic streets desperately trying to catch a bus or taxi. In addition, as 270 traffic signals also were affected by power cut in central London, traffic in London was also virtually paralyzed.

“60 percent of London subway services are at a halt. The problem seems to have originated from the power supply grid,” London Underground authorities said. Authorities, however, have not yet found the exact cause of the outage.

The London Fire Brigade had some 400 phone calls for rescues and some 100 people were rescued after being trapped in elevators, foreign media, including Reuters, reported.

“There`s no indication of any terrorist involvement and we are trying to find the exact cause of the outage,” said London`s mayor, Ken Livingstone during a press conference.

“The problem has likely originated in two high-voltage lines that help supply electricity to the Wimbledon area of southeast London,” said a representative of EDF Energy, which handles power transmission for the outage areas.

Sung-Kyu Kim kimsk@donga.com