Several parts of Italy were still without electricity early on Monday well over a day after the worst blackout in the country’s history, as debate raged over who was to blame for the devastating power failure.
The power cut paralysed the country for several hours since the lights first went out early on Sunday morning, stranding thousands on trains and escalators, and claiming the lives of at least three elderly people.
By Monday morning, electricity had been restored to most parts of the country with teams working overnight to restore normalcy to the areas still deprived of power.
The company in charge of Italy’s power supply, GRTN, said there was no danger of any power cuts for Tuesday and no need for local distributors to prepare back-up measures.
As for Monday, the company said there would be no further power outages through to 10am GMT, but inhabitants of several regions in the south woke up on Monday to find that power had yet to be restored to their areas.
The civil protection services said electricity had not returned to parts of the provinces of Enna and Caltanissetta on the Mediterranean island of Sicily as well as the southeastern Puglia region due to problems on the local distribution network.
The authorities have promised that there should be no further power cuts for the bulk of the country on Monday morning, even though ”programmed” electricity interruptions could take place later in the day.
As Italians asked themselves how the electricity supply could fail across the entire country, the press rushed to heap the blame on the government of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.
Only the island of Sardinia was unaffected by the cut, which left about 50-million of Italy’s 57-million inhabitants without power from about 3.30am (1.30am GMT) on Sunday and up to 30 000 passengers trapped in trains.
For the left-wing daily La Repubblica, the power cut was proof of Berlusconi’s ”inability to manage the problems of a modern society, to cope with daily uncertainties, to resolve the most banal technical incidents”.
After the dramatic power cut which hit the United States in mid-August, Berlusconi had assured Italians that such a disaster could never happen in their country.
Meanwhile the La Stampa daily issued a plea to the government: ”Don’t tell us now that it’s the fault of the Swiss and the French and at the end of the day it could have been worse, and thank God it was a Saturday evening.”
”No, say it clearly. The breakdown reminded us of a reality for which we are absolutely not prepared,” it said.
Italian officials have blamed the failure on problems outside the country, and French distribution network RTE said Sunday the failure orginated in Switzerland. But Swiss officials have denied their country was alone responsible.
La Repubblica predicted there would now be a serious debate between the three countries over the causes of the blackout.
”Our system is vulnerable because we depend on foreign supply,” said GRTN president Andrea Bollino.
Bollino said it would take until Tuesday for the situation to return to completely normal, and that the utility would remain on heightened alert on Monday.
The Corriere della Sera, the country’s best selling newspaper, blamed the power cut on policies ”that did not know how to govern an [electricity market liberalisation] that was so complicated and delicate”.
Two of the elderly victims of the blackout were killed after falling down their stairwells in the dark, while a third died after her clothes caught fire on a candle.
Hospitals in the affected areas switched to emergency generators following the cut, which followed blackouts in London as well as Sweden and Denmark. — Sapa-AFP