Load shedding

I was amused when I heard on the BBC about the major blackout that occurred in some cities of the mighty America and Canada. The disaster struck in late evening and forced many people to spend the night outside, on the roads, subways, stations and pavements or any space under the open sky. President Bush himself said no terrorist attack was behind this incident. Authorities said that this extensive technical failure might have been caused by lightning or small fire. It was a rare occurrence. No such incident was reported since 1965.After that some back-up measures were taken but all of them failed this time.

Power grid operators said that negligence in modernising some power-transmission infrastructure, which runs on a fairly old method, let this happen on a greater scale. However, it was amazing that America, despite being at the helm of global power, experienced such catastrophe because of poor and old infrastructure just like our unfortunate third world country. So we cannot blame our authorities much and it is proved that even the most advanced countries of the world fail, rarely though, in power transmission. But in our case, it is a regular phenomenon.