Power Outage Cripples Central, Western India
Authorities struggled Wednesday to restore electricity to five Indian states--home to 235 million people--after they were plunged into darkness overnight in one of the biggest power outages in years.
Hospital services were suspended, trains stopped running and factories shut down in the states of Maharashtra, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Goa, in the central and western parts of the country. Some water supplies also dried up as pumps stopped working.
“We hope to bring the situation to normal by evening,” said R.P. Singh, chairman of Power Grid Corp., which oversees the electricity network in the country.
Power was restored Wednesday morning in most cities and towns, after a 12-hour outage. But power was yet to return to thousands of villages, he said.
The blackout occurred after Madhya Pradesh state tried to pull more electricity from the national grid than the network could handle, Singh said.
A drought has lowered hydroelectric dams’ output.
Start your day right
Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
