Power Failure - Risks? - R+V Versicherung

High impact – examples:
• 9 th November 1965 – blackout North and north eastern America – 30 million impacted, without electricity for
up to 12 hours.
• 11 th March 1999 – blackout South and south eastern Brazil – 97 million people impacted
• 14/15 th August 2003 – blackout North and north eastern America – 55 million impacted
• 28 th August 2003, London - blackout, affecting an area from central London to south London, most of London
Underground and commuter trains. The report of the London Assembly: "Although power was restored in 30
minutes, the resulting chaos lasted well into the night".
• 28 th September 2003 - blackout all across Italy for 12 hours – 55 million impacted, 110 trains were reported to
have been brought to a standstill across the country - trapping thousands of people.
• 29 th November 2004 – Spain experienced five blackouts over 10 days impacting on 2 million people.
• 18 th August 2005 – blackout Java, Indonesia – 100 million people impacted
• 4 November 2006 parts of Germany, Italy, Belgium, Spain, France and Portugal - 15 million households were
left without power! The root cause was an overload triggered by the German electricity company E.ON
switching off an electricity line over the river Ems to allow the cruise ship to pass through safely.
• 20 th July 2009, power was cut to around 100,000 homes in the areas of South East London and North Kent, UK,
after vandals deliberately caused a fire near a cable installation, power supplies were cut to around half of the
homes for around 4 days, whilst other homes were given 3 hour allocations of power followed by 6 hours "off
• 10 th November 2009 – blackout Central, south and south eastern Brazil and all Paraguay – 87 million people
impacted. Thousands of passengers were stranded as trains came to a halt and buses failed to cope with the
volume of passengers. There were widespread reports of road accidents as street lighting and traffic lights
failed.