The Russian capital experiences blackouts throughout the city, and created an incredible mess.
According to Pravda, a man-caused catastrophe disrupted electrical service throughout Russia’s capital at 11 am Moscow time. Compounding the problem for Moscovites was an unusual heat wave of nearly 90 degrees Fahrenheit.
Numerous breakdowns occurred at power plants, leaving the city’s hospitals and morgues without air conditioning. Water service and cellular towers failed during the blackout as well. And about 80 percent of Russian web traffic goes through Moscow; it went away with the outage.
Russian authorities had to evacuate 20,000 people from the city’s subway system after the trains shut down. Service was restored around 2 pm local time.
The Russian vice prime minister blamed the problem on an explosion and fire at a 40-year old substation of the energy company, Unified Electricity Systems. A cause for the explosion has not yet been disclosed, and authorities continue to investigate.
President Vladimir Putin, however, quickly blamed the state-controlled power monopoly and its director for the problem.
“I think it’s possible to talk about the inadequate attention that the UES leadership has paid to the current activities of the company,” Mr. Putin said in televised comments.
Unified Energy Systems is headed by Anatoly Chubais, a liberal party founder who has been critical of Mr. Putin’s leadership and the current prosecution of Mikhail Khordorkovsky.
Mr. Chubais quickly assumed responsibility for the outage, although a spokeperson for UES blames old equipment wearing out for the mishap.
The outage affected areas as far as 120 miles south of Moscow. The Interfax news agency blamed the outage for causing a chemical plant explosion, where nitric oxide was released into the air. No injuries from that incident have been reported.
David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business. Email him here.
