FLASH
Shkruar nga Pamfleti
Spain and Portugal have been plunged into chaos due to a massive and widespread power outage that also affected parts of France, in an unprecedented outage by European standards.
A few hours later and while the electricity supply is being restored in some areas, while estimates are not optimistic for full restoration in both countries, placing it at a time of 6 to 10, the Portuguese give the answer to what happened.
REN, Portugal's grid operator, said the chaos was caused by a "rare atmospheric phenomenon" in Spain's electricity system.
Portuguese energy chiefs attributed the fault to "abnormal oscillations" in very high voltage lines.
The phenomenon is known as "atmospheric induced change" and it may take up to a week for the network to fully normalize.
The outage caused chaos in parts of Portugal and Spain as traffic lights stopped working, causing traffic chaos. Transport networks were disrupted, hospitals were left without power and people were stranded in metros and elevators.
In Madrid, hundreds of people stood in the streets outside office buildings and there was a heavy police presence around several important buildings, with officers directing traffic and moving along central courtyards with lights on.
AENA, which manages 46 airports in Spain, reported flight delays across the country. Portugal's airport operator ANA said airports had activated emergency generators, which are currently allowing essential airport operations to be maintained at Porto and Faro airports.
"In Lisbon, operations are continuing, but with restrictions. So far, there have been no impacts at Madeira and Azores airports," he said.
"The electricity has been cut, not the water," says a supermarket worker in Madrid, as many people leave the store with bottles and full trolleys.
Dozens of residents, according to El Mundo, have lined up at the door of one of the few supermarkets in central Madrid that remained open after the power outage.
"You can only enter if it's full, but you can enter and pay by card," explains a chain employee who stands at the door, along with the guard, to give the order to enter, as neighbors gather on the sidewalk.
Those waiting to enter the stores do so in line and silently, with the lesson we have learned from the Covid-19 pandemic. Those who leave return home with carts filled with food, many bottles of water and toilet paper.
At the same time, queues are forming at ATMs where mainly tourists have rushed to withdraw money, surprised by what is happening.
Power outages of this scale are rare in Europe, according to Reuters. In 2003, a problem with a hydroelectric line between Italy and Switzerland caused a major blackout across the entire Italian peninsula for about 12 hours.
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