Moscow underground trains ground to a halt
Posted on 05/25/2005 6:39:31 AM PDT by Grey Squirrel
Edited on 05/25/2005 7:08:13 AM PDT by Sidebar Moderator. [history]
I cannot believe this has not been posted yet. This is my first post so I apologise for any inconsistensies errors etc. Also I only have sources of my native language about so no URL.
Blackout in Moscow and six surrounding oblasts. Water supply out. Hospitals, subway, police, trafic lights, 80% of internet etc. etc.
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BBC NEWS | Europe | Moscow hit by major power outage
Public transport services ground to a halt, Moscow's main stock exchange stopped trading and water supplies to homes were affected.
The electricity outage was caused by a fire and explosion at a substation, the energy minister told parliament.
It is not clear what caused the blast. About 20,000 commuters are reported to have been evacuated from underground trains stranded by the outage.
A transport police spokesman said emergency power supplies were used to bring trains into stations.
Areas up to 200km (120 miles) south of the city were also reported to be have been affected.
Duma deputy speaker Vladimir Pekhtin ruled out the possibility that the power outage was caused by sabotage. He told NTV Mir that it was more likely to have been caused by a technical incident.
"We are checking the information, but we can now rule out deliberate sabotage," he said.
Rising temperatures
A spokeswoman for electricity monopoly RAO UES said the problem stemmed from a fire.
"The problem started yesterday evening. The reason was a fire in the switching equipment at the Chagino substation," she told Reuters news agency.
"Staff dealt with the fire and overnight changed the equipment. However during peak consumption time this morning the problem recurred."
The Micex stock exchange stopped trading for two hours as many of its clients did not have power.
There is some speculation that the power cut could have been due to an overload in demand as Moscow has seen unseasonably high temperatures and people have started using air conditioning.
Saw something about this earlier. May be sabotage.
More here on the BBC:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4578599.stm
AP says it was a substation fire.
Thanks for post. Please update should you receive more information.
Wow............Have a look at this.
Does this mean that the ice is melting? Ah, that global warming. We started using air conditioning here also. I think it was late January.
btt
MOSCOW, May 25 (Itar-Tass) - The electricity supply of 24 cities and settlements of the Moscow region will be partially restored by six in the evening, regional deputy governor Alexei Panteleyev said.
Massive power outages on Wednesday morning have stopped the Moscow underground, with tens of thousands of passengers stranded in train cars.
Panteleyev said thousands of express buses would ply in the evening from underground stations to the Moscow region’s cities where commuter train are not going because of the electricity problems.
When the electricity crisis broke out, all hospitals, maternity houses and vital facilities began to use standby diesel generators, and the power supply problem did not affect patients in hospitals and intensive care units and ambulance stations, Panteleyev said.
Whoa! Will check in later to see what's happening.
Putin slams power monopoly after big Moscow outage
Wed May 25, 2005 09:19 AM ETBy Christian Lowe
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Moscow was plunged into chaos on Wednesday after a big power outage that President Vladimir Putin blamed on the state-owned electricity monopoly headed by a liberal politician viewed with suspicion by the Kremlin.
The outage, caused by a fire in a substation, shut the stock exchange, crippled transport and threatened mobile phone links in the sweltering Russian capital.
Energy Minister Viktor Khristenko said the breakdown was caused by a fire and explosion overnight at an electricity substation. There was no evidence of a terrorist attack, he said.
But Putin, who delayed a provincial trip because of the crisis, pointed the finger at the management of Unified Energy System whose chief executive is Anatoly Chubais, one of the architects of the post-Soviet market revolution whose liberal views sit uneasily with Kremlin hard-liners.
"It is entirely possible to talk about a lack of attention on the part of RAO UES to the current activity of the company.
"They should work not only on global problems about company policy and its restructuring, but also pay attention to current activity," Putin said in televised remarks.
Chubais, one of Russia's best known figures who survived an assassination attempt in March, was quoted as saying he accepted full responsibility for the outage.
Putin was clearly suggesting that Chubais was spending too much time on his widely-publicised plans for a corporate restructuring of the electricity behemoth and was losing sight of the operational running of the firm.
Though a leader of the Union of Right Forces party, Chubais quit active politics in 1998 to lead UES. He now heads a company with annual revenues of $21.6 billion and a market capitalization of $12.4 billion.
While he has generally refrained from open criticism of Kremlin policy, Chubais was one of the few public figures inside Russia to condemn the prosecution of oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky who is on trial for fraud and tax evasion.
TRADING HALTED
Moscow's main MICEX foreign exchange and share market stopped trading for several hours because, though it had power, many of its clients did not. It reopened later in the afternoon.
The underground (metro) system ground to a halt, leaving more than 20,000 passengers stranded below ground in the capital which is experiencing a heatwave with temperatures around 30 C (85 Fahrenheit).
The passengers were evacuated after an hour, Svetlana Czareva, head of the metro's press office, told Reuters.
"There was a fire and explosion at the Chagino substation," said Khristenko, referring to a locality south-east of Moscow. "As a result of the explosion several transformers were destroyed."
He put it down to the age of the Soviet-era substation, built in 1963.
"According to the information I have ... there is no evidence of terrorism," he told reporters. "Most likely the problem was old equipment."
The defense ministry helped out by feeding some of its own power into the civilian grid.
Trams and trolleybuses came to a standstill and traffic lights stopped working, causing a flurry of road traffic accidents and massive traffic congestion.
Suburban commuter trains, including one to a major city international airport, on several routes were also affected. Water supplies to homes were disrupted.
Two Russian mobile phone operators said they were working on reserve power and would have to switch off the network if electricity was not restored soon.
RAO UES said the outage had hit between 10 and 12 percent of capacity in Moscow and the surrounding region.
It said it hoped to restore power to essential users, such as hospitals, by about 1330 GMT and have the rest back to normal within 24 hours.
The problem at the substation forced engineers to switch off large parts of the power system to avoid overloading power lines, a spokeswoman said.
Was it a tree in the power lines that caused it/sarc.
It sounds like the Russian's electrical distribution system is starting to catch up with the US grid - this sounds somewhat comparable to the '65 Eastern-US blackout. - scope probably somewhat smaller.
Yup. I was only 5 when the '65 Blackout occurred but I remember it.
That Karl Rove is GOOD.
ROFLMAO!
I was in my teens, and in Niagara Falls at the time. We lost power for about 5 minutes... and pretty much just chuckled over how unaware we were about how its effects and scope over a lot of the East - until the hospital reports made it so clear nine months later.
I'm flying to Moscow in a few days and I hope the landing lights are on by the time we start descending!
Thanks for letting us know about this. Fox News hasn't said anything yet, as far as I can tell. 
I remember thinking it was kinda fun. (LOL What did I know - I was a silly kid!). Using candles and sitting outside all night with my mom and my relatives was fun.
what 21 post and this hasn't been blamed on Bush yet?
Chemical Plant Blows Up South of Moscow: Special Forces on Scene (debka/pravda)
"It's Bush's fault!"
Nope, but Lazamataz blamed Rove in reply #17. That is basically the same as blaming Bush.
Thanks for posting -- this is troubling news. Big time.
Why hasn't FOX reported on this yet I wonder?
More here:
http://news.google.com/news?q=moscow+power&hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&safe=on
Related to the chemical factory explosion somehow?
Has there been a post by a credible source on the chemical plant?
Is posting by sqvirrel.
Coincidence??? NYET!!!!!!!
Ping.
LOL @ Boris Badenough!
That seems to be a lot of items to go out for a single sub-station outage in a modern major city.
Could it have been something related to the blast of Chemical Plant that was posted on Free Republic recently?
ping
This is huge news in Germany as well. Everything is affected. 16 hospitals are working on generators. People don't have water and they are sending water trucks to help out.
WILD!!!!
Probably trying to get more of the story, my two cents.
From:
http://www.trafford.gov.uk/cme/live/cme1922.htm
Pest Status
The grey squirrel was first introduced to this country [UK} from the USA in 1876. It is now common throughout England, Wales and Scotland and in many areas is considered a pest.
Grey squirrels may carry fleas and other parasites.
If they get into your property they can cause serious damage. They chew woodwork and ceilings, strip the insulation from electrical wiring, tear up loft insulation to form a nest and sometimes drown in cold water tanks.
The noise they make, particularly at night, scratching and running about can be very disturbing.
They cause environmental damage, stripping bark off trees causing young trees to die, and can destroy many garden plants with their activities
We will hear more of this and I don't think we will like what we hear.
Thanks. So far I haven't seen any other news about it.
This best part about Moscow in the summertime is when they turn off the hot water for a week.
EEEK! in the shower, d00d.
Nope. A squirrel in said tree.
/sarcasm
hmmmm, veddy interrrrestink.
ping away with any updates, dearie. am cubie bound today
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