Power outage in Dutch city leaves over 20,000 households in dark

The Hague, May 1 (IANS) A major power outage struck the eastern Dutch city of Enschede, leaving more than 20,000 households without electricity for about two hours, local authorities said.

According to Dutch grid operator Enexis, the blackout was caused by a short circuit during maintenance work at a distribution station.

The outage began around 11 a.m. local time and affected homes and businesses across the city of nearly 160,000 residents, Xinhua news agency reported on Wednesday.

Many shops were forced to close as cash registers and ATMs became inoperable.

A technician was injured in the short circuit and was taken to hospital with unknown injuries, the local safety region reported.

Although the incident was quickly resolved, it sparked broader concerns about the country's preparedness for large-scale outages, especially in light of the widespread blackout earlier this week in Spain and Portugal.

"The chance of a similar event here is very small, but still - what if?" Hein van der Loo, Chairman of the national Safety Council, said in an interview with the television program Nieuwsuur.

The Netherlands is divided into 25 safety regions that coordinate emergency services at the local, regional, and national levels.

Van der Loo said these systems are generally well organised but expressed concern over the readiness of fire stations in the event of a major power failure.

He estimated that around half of the country's nearly 1,000 fire stations are insufficiently prepared and called for every station to be equipped with an emergency generator.

What happened in Spain and Portugal should be a wake-up call for the government, he said, adding that the Netherlands urgently needs a reliable network of emergency support points.

The outage began at around midday. Offices closed and traffic was snarled in Madrid and Lisbon, while some civilians in Barcelona directed traffic.

Train services in both countries stopped. It wouldn't be possible to restart trains later on Monday even if the power returned, Spain's Transportation Minister Oscar Puente posted on social media.

Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez convened an extraordinary meeting of the National Security Council.

The Portuguese Cabinet convened an emergency meeting at the Prime Minister's residence.

Portuguese Prime Minister Luís Montenegro said he had spoken several times to Sanchez and expected power to be restored by the end of Monday.

--IANS

int/khz