Nando Times

The Associated Press

MANILA, Philippines (April 6, 2001 6:02 p.m. EDT) - Manila is in the dark after the sprawling Philippine capital of nine million people suffered a surprise power outage hours before dawn Saturday.

Local radio carried scattered reports of a fire at a power station in Batangas, south of the capital, that also knocked out electricity to at least some of surrounding Luzon Island.

Police and utility officials could not be immediately reached for comment. The power went off just after 3:30 a.m. Saturday and had not been restarted 90 minutes later.

-- Rachel Gibson (rgibson@hotmail.com), April 07, 2001

Answers

Nando Times

MANILA, Philippines (April 7, 2001 9:58 a.m. EDT) - About 35 million Filipinos were without power for more than 14 hours Saturday after an overloaded transmission line caused a blackout on the main island of Luzon and in the nation's sprawling capital, Manila.

Elevators shuddered to a halt, Web sites crashed and an inky darkness blanketed the capital and other areas when the power first went out at 3:30 a.m., the National Power Corp. said.

Cash machines went blank, air conditioners fell silent and ice cream turned to goop in small stores as temperatures rose to 90 degrees by early afternoon. Traffic lights were out in metropolitan Manila, home to 9 million people, causing major traffic jams.

Electricity was restored to 72 percent of Luzon and about half of metropolitan Manila and nearby provinces by 5 p.m., officials said. Full power was expected later in the evening.

The overload of the transmission line, which links plants in the provinces of Quezon east of Manila and Laguna to the south, caused an automatic shutdown of all power stations linked to the Luzon grid as part of the system's safety feature, the state-run power company said.

President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo ruled out sabotage, but ordered a thorough investigation.

A second power failure at midmorning halted Manila's commuter train system, said Arvee Villafuerte, a spokesman for the power company.

Generators kept flights running on time, airport officials said.

-- Rachel Gibson (rgibson@hotmail.com), April 07, 2001.

CBC

Sun Apr 8, 9:36 am

Shantytown fire in Manila leaves thousands homeless

A fire in a shanty town in Manila has killed two people and left about 5,000 homeless.

Two children are also still missing.

The fire, which began before midnight, lasted for seven hours, and destroyed more than one thousand shanties in the fishing town of Malabon, along Manila Bay.

It was apparently started by a candle or a lamp. The area had been hit by a power blackout.

Officials say firefighters could not reach many areas in the darkness because of a maze of ramshackle huts and narrow alleys.

-- Rachel Gibson (rgibson@hotmail.com), April 08, 2001.