Barcelona's Blackout

Worry about blackouts isn't confined to the US. Europe and the rest of the world have them as well. A blackout in Barcelona shut down large parts of the city earlier today:

Fecsa attributed the outage to a failure of part of the high-tension network of Catalonia.

A power failure that affects since this morning a large part of Barcelona and the región of Baix Llobregat is causing large problems in the Barcelona area leaving without light numerous homes, businesses, hospitals, traffic lights and public transportation systems such as the Metro and the Ferrocarriles de la Generalitat.

According to information provided to Efe by Barcelona Town Hall, the outage coincided with fires at two electrical transformers in the city, situated on Paseo Maragall and Avenida Josep Tarradellas, where various fire departments responded.

For its part, a spokesman for the company Fecsa-Endesa confirmed that the outage affected various points of the city and the metropolitana area, although he affirmed that it still remains unknown the causes and the number affected.

The outage left without electricity a good part of the districts of Sants, Eixample, Gracia, Sant Andreu, Sarrià-Sant Gervasi and Ciutat Vella, as well as some neighborhoods of L'Hospitalet de Llobregat and de Esplugues, has provoked considerable road and train chaos, and has left without light a large number of businesses, stores and homes.

At its height, more than 300,000 customers were without power. Infrastructure woes aren't unique to the US. The rest of the world has to deal with systems that are getting older and limited efforts to modernize them.

Here in the New York metro area, Con Ed continues to get slammed for its response to the steam explosion. Longtime critic, NYC Councilman Michael Gianaris (D-Queens) wants the utility to face increased scrutiny and oversight. His district was hit hard by last summer's extended blackout when Con Ed's power grid suffered a major meltdown.

Gianaris said Con Ed should reimburse the dozens of businesses that have been affected by the blast for lost business - something he said was not done for the merchants in his district who were affected by the 2006 blackout.

"They covered nothing for lost business opportunity in that eight-, nine-day period, and it sounds to me like they're doing the same thing in midtown Manhattan, where they're covering clothes and cleanup and they're telling people to file their claims for lost business and their lawyers will review them on a case-by-case basis," he said.

Following last summer's blackout, which affected more than 100,000 people, Gianaris headed an Assembly task force that introduced legislation to force Con Ed to compete, to mandate independent audits of the utility and to increase reimbursements to merchants affected by outages.

"They have no reason to improve because there's not a damn thing we can do about it when they screw up," Gianaris said at a news conference in front of Con Ed headquarters near Union Square. "We can no longer sit by and coddle this company and pat them on the back every time disaster strikes."