List of power outages
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This is a list of famous wide-scale power outages
- The Northeast Blackout of 1965 on November 9, 1965.
- The New York City Blackout of July 13-14, 1977, resulted in looting and rioting.
- On December 19, 1978, a major blackout affected 80% of France.
- The Great Storm of October 1987 brought down power lines throughout southern England causing extensive blackouts.
- On March 13, 1989, a geomagnetic storm caused the Hydro-Quebec power failure which left 6 million people without power for 9 or more hours.
- The January 1998 ice storm in northeastern North America caused prolonged blackouts, particularly in Quebec where many transmission towers were destroyed by ice.
- The 1998 power failures in Auckland, New Zealand.
- During the California electricity crisis there were regular power failures due to energy shortages and market manipulation resulting from failed deregulation.
- On August 14, 2003, there was a wide-area power failure in the northeastern USA and central Canada, affecting 50 million people: see 2003 North America blackout.
- There was a 2003 London blackout on August 28 which won worldwide headlines such as "Power cut cripples London" but in fact only affected 500,000 people.
- On September 23, 2003, a power failure affected 5 million people in Denmark and southern Sweden.
- On September 27-28, 2003, a power failure affected all of Italy except Sardinia, cutting service to more than 56 million people.
- On December 20, 2003, a power failure hit San Francisco, affecting 120,000 people.
- On September 4, 2004, five million people in Florida were without power at one point due to Hurricane Frances, one of the most widespread outages ever due to a hurricane.
- On May 25, 2005, most part of Moscow was without power from 11:00 MSK (+0300 UTC). Approximately ten million people were affected. Power was restored within 24 hours.
- On June 14 2005, 6500 people in Staten Island, New York lost power for an unknown chain-reaction caused by a downed transmission.
The fact that the five blackouts in 2003 occurred in different parts of the world in rapid succession has drawn the attention of governments to power grids' vulnerability to technical failures, and to the possibility of terrorist attacks against them.