Power Blackout Risks

3.2.1. Historical blackouts

the ten most severe blackouts concerning affected population and duration
new Zealand
20.02.1998
Technical failure, a chain reaction caused by a line failure

4 weeks MMM 
70,000
brazil (70% of the territory)
11.03.1999
Natural event, a chain reaction was started when a lightning strike 
occurred at 22h at an electricity substation in Bauru, São Paulo 
State causing most of the 440 kV circuits at the substation to trip.
Urban chaos led by huge traffic jams and public subway and
suburban trains systems that were out.

5h MMM 
97,000,000
u.s.a. (north-east) + canada (central)
14.08.2003 (detailed description see Annex)
A combination of lack of maintenance, human error and equip-
ment failures caused an outage that affected large portions of 
the Midwest and Northeast United States and Ontario, Canada. 
This area typically has a total electric load of 61,800 MW. The 
blackout began a few minutes after 4:00 pm Eastern Daylight 
Time and power was not restored for 4 consecutive days in 
some parts of the United States. 

4 days MMM 
50,000,000
Economic losses: about USD 6 bn
italy (all italy, except sardinia)
28.09.2003 (detailed description see Annex)
Technical failure, a domino effect that ultimately led to the
separation of the Italian system from the rest of the European grid.
30,000 people were trapped on trains. Several hundred passengers 
were stranded on underground transit systems. Many commercial 
and domestic users suffered disruption in their power supplies for 
up to 48 hours. The subway had to be evacuated.

18h MMM 
56,000,000 Deaths: 4
indonesia (Java island)
18.08.2005
Technical failure, power failed along the electrical system that 
connects Java, Bali, and Madura, causing outages in Java and 
Bali. This led to a cascading failure that shut down two units of 
the Paiton plant in East Java and six units of the Suralaya plant
in West Java.

7h MMM 
100,000,000