Vinci: Italy begins to ask 'Why?'
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CNN's Alessio Vinci in Rome
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Power went out suddenly in just about all of Italy on Saturday. CNN's Alessio Vinci reports (September 28)
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ROME, Italy (CNN) -- Italy is recovering from a power outage that cast 90 percent of the country into darkness and left four people dead. Officials say normal service should be restored Tuesday.
In the meantime, the government has called for an inquiry to look into the cause of Italy's largest outage since World War II. CNN'S Rome Bureau Chief Alessio Vinci said questions are already being asked as to who is to blame.
VINCI: "Before we go into why it happened, we must report that as a result four people died during the hours of darkness. All of them were elderly women, two of whom fell in the darkness of their apartments, while one accidentally set fire to her clothes after lighting candles to try and see by. Another died in a traffic accident -- the lights were not working.
"Now of course, the question of what happened and why is being asked. Preliminary investigation results point to a chain reaction of multiple failures, possibly beginning in Switzerland. A tree fell and tripped a power line supplying energy to Italy and including somehow Austria and France as well.
"Switzerland and France do acknowledge the supply was momentarily cut but they say it was restored shortly afterwards and blame the Italian side for failing to react quickly.
"For the Italian side, officials are saying the simultaneous failure of energy supplies from both France and Switzerland caused a chain reaction that only gave them four seconds, and in that amount of time of course, there was very little they could do.
"What is clear is that the blackout exposed Italy's necessity to import energy."
About 17 percent of Italy's needs come from abroad. Italy decided decades ago not to develop its own nuclear power -- but the irony is, the energy it imports from France is nuclear.
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi had boasted the recent power outage in the U.S. Northeast and Canada could not happen in Italy.
Vinci said that when something like Sunday's outage happens, critics "always blame the man in charge, but it is not clear who is to blame" -- especially since privatization of the energy sector.
"Many, many people are involved," Vinci added. "It is not clear whether one side is more responsible."
