Thousands stranded as London goes dark

29 August 2003, 18:00 PM

AFP, London

Commuters seek information at the abandoned Northfields underground station Thursday as a major power failure in parts of London brought rail networks to a halt during rush hour. London Mayor Ken Livingstone ruled out terrorism as cause for the power cut that caused travel chaos for up to 500,000 people. Electricity was restored to most of the British capital within hours. Photo: AFP

The lights came back on in London late Thursday after a major blackout during rush hour stranded hundreds of thousands of commuters, snarled up traffic and shut down most of the public transport system.

Power was fully restored some two and a half hours after the blackout, said a spokesman for the National Grid, which operates the electricity system throughout the country. Most areas hit had power restored within 30 minutes.

The blackout hit nearly 60 percent of the London underground rail network and a large number of electrically-powered suburban commuter trains heading south out of the capital.

It came two weeks to the day after a massive blackout threw much of the northeastern United States and southeastern Canada into darkness.

London mayor Ken Livingstone released a statement calling for an inquiry into the capital's power failure, which he called a "disgrace".

"It is totally unacceptable that this has happened, affecting at least 250,000 people as well as the transport system," he said.

"Under-investment in the National Grid must not be allowed to cause this kind of chaos in a city like London. This event demands the fullest inquiry to ensure it does not happen again in the future."

Livingstone said that up to half a million people could have been affected by the blackout.

The power supplier to the area hit is EDF Energy, a subsidiary of the main French power utility Electricite de France.

"Following a fault with high voltage power lines... EDF Energy worked quickly to mitigate the problems resulting from the fault so that power could be restored to customers as quickly as possible," said a statement by EDF.

The National Grid said it could take distributors time to fully restore supplies to customers and it was investigating the cause of the fault.

Major central London rail hubs such as Waterloo, Victoria and London Bridge stations were badly hit by the power failure which occurred at 6:15 pm (1715 GMT.