Autumn had just arrived when, between 27 and 28 September 2003, Italy suddenly found itself surrounded by darkness. In a few tens of minutes, almost the whole country remained without current, from the North to the South, while the Sardinia And a few minor islands managed to avoid collapse. It was the largest blackout in the history of our country, a wound that still offers important food for thought on energy safety And climate change.
Everything originated away from the Italian borders. At 3:01 in the morning, an electric discharge in Switzerland caused the interruption of a line that directly supplied the peninsula. A simple contact between a cable and a tree was enough to trigger a chain of events that, in less than half an hour, died the lights of whole cities. Despite the attempts of the Swiss technicians to restore the connection, the Italian power reduction request was not timely or sufficient. At 3:27 Italy sank in the darkness.
The blackout took place in a particular night: Rome was celebrating the first “White Night”with museums, shops and premises exceptionally open until dawn. Over half a million people poured into the streets of the capital. The interruption of the energy hit the event in full.
The inconvenience made it heard. The hospitals remedied themselves to emergency generators so as not to interrupt vital interventions. In transport, trains and metropolitan were blocked, while thousands of people were trapped in the elevators. The water network of Venice also underwent interruptionswhile throughout Italy it is feared for the conservation of chilled foods.
Behind the blackout there was not only the Swiss accident. For some time the experts warned on the fragility of the Italian electricity gridstressed by the increase in demand due to the torrid summer of 2003. Air conditioners on day and night They had already crisis the holding of the system. The situation, worsened by overload interconnections, was the perfect prelude to an announced disaster.
The current returned to sob: in the north already on the morning of September 29, in the center-south only in the afternoon. Some areas of Sicily regained energy only in the late evening.
Europe in the dark: the massive blackout that Spain, Portugal, France and Belgium brought to its knees
