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European officials probe cause of hourslong power outages in Spain, Portugal

Officials don't believe a cyberattack is behind outages that also affected small area of France

People buy groceries in a Lisbon store amid a power outage affecting much of Portugal. The electricity issues also occurred in Spain and parts of France. (Adri Salido/Getty Images)

People buy groceries in a Lisbon store amid a power outage affecting much of Portugal. The electricity issues also occurred in Spain and parts of France. (Adri Salido/Getty Images)

Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said Monday that a problem in the European grid he described as a "strong oscillation" led to the huge power outrage that struck his country, Portugal and parts of France, but that the cause was still being determined.

The blackout brought much of Spain and Portugal to a standstill Monday, halting subway and railway trains, cutting phone service and shutting down traffic lights and ATMs for millions of people across the Iberian Peninsula.

Sánchez asked the public to refrain from speculation and said no theory about the cause of the outage had been discarded. He thanked the governments of France and Morocco, where energy was being pulled from to restore power to north and southern Spain.

Spanish power distributor Red Eléctrica earlier said that restoring power to large parts of the country could take six to 10 hours. 

 

One person with back to camera lifts up a metallic garage door a few feet as another person crouches below to enter inside.
Local residents attempt to manually open the gate of an underground parking lot during a massive power cut in Vigo, northwestern Spain, on Monday. (Miguel Riopa/AFP/Getty Images)

 

Eduardo Prieto, head of operations at Red Eléctrica, told journalists it was unprecedented, calling the event "exceptional and extraordinary," but the company declined to speculate on the causes of the blackout.

Teresa Ribera, European Commission executive vice-president in charge of promoting clean energy, said there were no indications of a cyberattack in Monday's power outage, in comments to Spanish journalists in Brussels. Ribera described the outage as "one of the most serious episodes recorded in Europe in recent times."

The Portuguese National Cybersecurity Centre also issued a statement saying there was no sign the outage was due to a cyberattack. 

 

From ground level, dozens of people both men and women are shown lined up on a sidewalk.
People stand at a bus stop after the metro in Lisbon was closed following the power outage. (Pedro Nunes/Reuters)

 

Spain and Portugal have a combined population of about 60 million people. It was not immediately clear how many were affected. It is rare to have such a widespread outage across the Iberian Peninsula. 

Spain's Canary Islands, Balearic Islands and the territories of Ceuta and Melilla, located across the Mediterranean in Africa, were not impacted by the outage.

People rush to buy generators

A graph on Spain's electricity network website showing demand across the country indicated a steep drop around 12:15 p.m. local time, from 27,500 megawatts to near 15,000 megawatts.

Video aired on Spanish television showed people evacuating metro stations in Madrid and empty stations with trains stopped in Barcelona.

Spain's traffic department is asking citizens to avoid using their cars as much as possible due to the power outage, which has affected traffic lights and electrical road signage.

 

A train is shown on a track in a countryside setting. Several metres from the train, a person is standing on the tracks.
A freight train loaded with cars is stopped on the track during the nationwide power outage in Spain, near Sagunto, in the eastern part of the country. (Alberto Saiz/The Associated Press)

 

In Terrassa, an industrial town 50 kilometres from Barcelona, stores selling generators were out of stock after people lined up to buy them.

Portugal's electricity distributor E-Redes said parts of France, which shares its southwest border with Spain, also were affected.

In Portugal, a country of some 10.6 million people, the outage hit the capital, Lisbon, and surrounding areas, as well as northern and southern parts of the country. Portuguese police placed more officers on duty to direct traffic and cope with increased requests for help, including from people trapped in elevators.

Portuguese hospitals and other emergency services switched to generators. Gas stations stopped working and trains stopped running.

Dozens of people are shown in the corridor of a stadium, which is not well lit.
Spectators roam inside the Madrid Open tennis tournament venue during a general blackout in Madrid on Monday. (Manu Fernandez/The Associated Press)

 

Portugal's National Authority for Emergencies and Civil Protection said backup power systems were operating.

Author: Editors Desk, The Associated Press

Source: CBC News:

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