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Thats why no electricity in baghdad

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   http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20030815/wl_canada_nm/canada_power_world_col_1

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20030815/wl_canada_nm/canada_power_world_col_1

World Sympathy And Wisecracks for U.S. Blackout
Fri Aug 15,11:28 AM ET

By Jeremy Laurence

LONDON (Reuters) - Some people voiced admiration, others worried, and some could not help but poke fun at the world's self-confessed "superpower with a Third World grid."

"Now we understand why they (Americans) have been unable to get the electricity running in Baghdad," said 47-year-old engineer Ghassan Tombin in the Gulf Arab country of Dubai.

From Nairobi to Moscow and beyond, the world was aghast that New York and a swathe of other cities across the United States and Canada could be shut down by a blackout.

Many praised New Yorkers for their orderly response. "I'm sure everyone was fearful of another September 11, but they banded together and showed a great deal of camaraderie," said London taxi driver Steve Murray, 40.

As power gradually began returning after the biggest outage in North American history, people in other countries weighed whether such a large-scale breakdown could happen also to them.

While more than 50 million people battled to cope in America, tens of thousands of airline passengers were left stranded abroad, international business operations came to a standstill and phones jammed.

Former U.S. energy secretary Bill Richardson described the United States as a "superpower with a Third World grid."

Flights to Canada and the northeastern United States were cancelled around the world, frustrating some in departure lounges and frightening others already airborne.

Anatoly Chubais, chief executive of Russia's national power monopoly Unified Energy System (UES), called the blackout "the biggest accident in the history of world energy systems."

The world's newspapers splashed images of thousands of New Yorkers streaming across the Brooklyn Bridge onto front pages.

In Iraq (news - web sites), where the U.S. administration has been struggling to restore power since ousting Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) in early April, residents in the capital worried how high-tech Americans would ever restore electricity with such huge power problems at home.

"They have the best equipment and technology and a power shortage can make such a big fuss in the United States. Now I am sure it will take them years to fix the electricity in Iraq," said Ali Saghbal, a worker at a Baghdad power station.

DISPARAGING

In Nairobi, some residents were far from sympathetic, saying Americans were receiving a taste of what it was like to live in the world's poorer countries.

"America, welcome to Kenya, see what we go through," said Alex Mwaura, a logistics officer with an aid agency in Nairobi.

"I'm happy -- let them experience how bushmen live without power, even for just one minute," added Emma Nzau, a 28-year-old receptionist. "Americans are so used to electricity, they should be like the Chinese and ride bicycles to work."

For many the question was: could it happen to them?

Officials in some countries dismissed the possibility of a similar power outage, saying their networks could not compare in size and complexity to the U.S. grid.

Julian Jessup, senior international economist at Standard Chartered bank in London, said: "It is a reminder of how vulnerable the U.S. economy is to problems in the energy sector, and there are a lot of problems there."

Some said their systems were more advanced and they were better equipped to cope with such breakdowns.

"I would find it very difficult to believe that an outage of this scale where all of Tokyo suffers a power outage...would happen in Japan," said Koji Morita, general manager of the energy think-tank Institute of Energy Economics Japan (IEEJ).

Even in Russia, where small-scale blackouts are common, the system is better protected against such widescale disruptions, said UES's Chubais.

"But any power system anywhere in the world to some extent is vulnerable to multiple events," sympathised Paul Panther-Price, Australia's electricity market management company spokesman.

German services union Verdi said Germany was at risk of power outages also as fierce competition was forcing companies to take drastic cost-saving measures.

(With contributions from Moscow, Nairobi, Baghdad, Dubai, Sydney, Tokyo, Berlin)


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Thats why no electricity in baghdad
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Us canada argue over cause
Utility deregulation possible villain { August 16 2003 }

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