White nights in Italian

Rome and the Vatican spent Sunday without power

Early yesterday morning, at half past three, Italy was left without electricity. Emergency generators kept hospitals and airports running. Only the island of Sardinia, cut off from the mainland, was not affected. The Italians, who were sleeping peacefully in their homes, also got off lightly. It was worse for those 30 thousand who traveled by rail (110 trains froze). And to the million Romans who took to the streets on the initiative of local authorities, called “white nights” (museums, monuments, shops and restaurants were open for mass celebrations on this night). The night turned out to be not white, but very black. Some of the night owls were stuck in elevators, while others were stuck in a paralyzed metro (the escalators were not working). Those who remained waited on the streets in pouring rain.

Italian authorities claim that the problem - a failure in power lines - came from France (Italy imports most of its electricity from France and Switzerland). The French company RTE insists that the cause of the accident is “not French” and “the power flow could have been restored immediately if the power line had been immediately restored on the Italian side.” Electricity gradually began to return to Italy as early as five o'clock in the morning - first to the industrial cities of northern Italy.

Italian morning newspapers used the English word blackout in their headlines. It has become widely used over the past couple of months, as major energy accidents have become a common occurrence. Mid-August - blackout in the USA and Canada (Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi promised the people that nothing like this could happen in Italy). End of August - accident in London. Last week - in Sweden and Denmark. And here is Italy. Italian authorities blame the weather - lightning or a falling tree. The energy of the Western world is becoming vulnerable to minor vagaries of nature.

Andrey ZLOBIN