Power cut in south London

[Chemical Ollie]

British technology could always give you a good laugh. England is the only place where I have ever needed to go to the reception and ask for a shower adapter for the bath tube, with an T-joint to connect both the cold and the hot water. In the same bathroom, the mirror was located on the opposite wall from the sink. Needless to say, the floor got a little messy after the morning shave.

A power failure in England does not surprise me at all.

[mrmitchell]

Don't jump to conclusions and immediately expect a massive terrorist attack or something, snotty. The 99.9% chance is still that it's just a coincidence that 2 major areas went out within weeks. (Actually, one of them was 20million?+ people over New England and southeastern Quebec...this one is just south London )

Power outages happen around here all the time. Limbs fall off trees, thunderstorms hit the lines, an ice storm or two every other winter...I never knew people could be so surprised at an outage, though I suppose those whiny New Englanders and Brits have to have everything perfect

[MOBIUS]

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG GGGGHHHHHHHHHHHH! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO - the terrorists have attacked - we're all going to die!

Yes I live in South London (No jokes please! ) and WE HAD A POWER CUT!

Um, for like 20 minutes but it was still light so I could still read and stuff. Oh and I feel rather embarrassed saying this, but at no point did I think it was a terrorist attack - it wasn't the rain either cos that started after the cut...

As we're the US' No.1 b*tch right now we decided we had to show solidarity and have our own little power cut...

Unfortunately we're a bit too inept to do power cuts properly so it didn't last very long...

Sorry!

[Snotty]

The latest.

Power cut causes chaos


Some Tube stations were evacuated
A rush-hour power cut has caused major disruption on rail and Tube services in London and the South East.
Power returned to the system at about 1900 BST and the rail and tube network took several hours before most services resumed normal operations.

Network Rail said about 1,800 trains were affected by the power cut, caused by a fault with the National Grid.

Train company Connex reported the power went out between London and Ashford, in Kent.

South London was hardest hit and Transport for London said 60% of the Tube network was affected.

Extremely busy

Stations and trains were evacuated as commuters using the Tube were plunged into darkness and some were stuck underground as the power went off at about 1820 BST.

Buses quickly became extremely busy and lines of people waiting for taxis grew as commuters abandoned packed Tube platforms.

London Fire Brigade took 400 calls and say they rescued about 100 people who were stuck in lifts.


Commuter misery at power cuts
Mayor of London Ken Livingstone said at least 250,000 people were affected and said the situation showed the need for a serious look at the National Grid and why power went down for so long.

"We've never had this catastrophic failure before and we clearly can't have it again," he said.

British Transport Police say Tube services have been restored.

Commuter Jane Marriott, 27, was trying to get to Paddington from Canada Water on the Tube, but ended up taking the bus and walking part of the way.

She said: "It's absolute chaos, it's very wet which is making people very miserable.


Queues grew for buses and taxis
"A bit of the Blitz spirit is kicking in and people are talking to each other which is nice, but we need more cabs and more bus lanes."

Businesses and homes in Brixton, Battersea and London Bridge were plunged into darkness and police said 270 sets of traffic lights went out.

St Thomas's Hospital, in south-east London was among those which had to rely on back-up power generators.

Network Rail spokesman Kevin Groves said the situation was "unprecedented" as far as he knew.

'Very similar to New York'

The National Grid is investigating the cause of the fault but spokesman Sean Regan said any loss of power supply was "an unusual occurrence".

He added: "There was a fault in the 275,000 volt system affecting a ring around London, which occurred at 1826 BST.

"Power to the distribution network in London was restored at 1900 BST.

"Obviously it is going to take the regional distribution network some time to restore supplies to the end users of their system. Hopefully it shouldn't be long now."

Civil servant Alan Basford, 52, from Meopham, Kent, added: "This disruption seems very similar to what happened in New York, and it's also a bit strange the two events have happened close together."

Originally posted by mrmitchell
Don't jump to conclusions and immediately expect a massive terrorist attack or something, snotty. The 99.9% chance is still that it's just a coincidence that 2 major areas went out within weeks.

I totally agree that its most likely a coincidence. We should just keep our eyes open to see if a pattern starts to develop.

Mobius, the report says the cut happened at 1826, but here in north surrey the rain really started coming down at 1500. I know it so precisely because I work outside. You must have been lucky to miss it.

[MikeH]

35mins?!

From the news reports I thought it was much worse.

[CerberusIV]

As I understand it the deregulation here isn't quite like it is in the USA. In the UK one company remains responsible for all the high voltage distribution lines and they are funded by a levy on everyone's electricity bill. The cost of keeping the grid up to a reasonable standard doesn't come directly out of the profits of the companies who actually bill the customers. The industry regulator is the one who actually decides how much money the national grid company gets to run the power transmission network.

Latest reports on the TV suggest two unrelated faults occurred in quick succession.

It's still better than the 3 hours on, 3 hours off supply in Baghdad!