Massive Failure: 670 Million In India Lose Power; Grid Collapses For Second Day

Day 1,715, 10:13 • Published in Pakistan China • by Hammad Javed

Things have gotten even worse in India, where a power failure that affected about 370 million people on Monday was followed by an even larger grid collapse today that left about 670 million without access to electricity.

That's nearly 200 million more people than the combined populations of Canada, the U.S., Mexico and the nations of Central America. The outage is affecting about half of India's population.

From New Delhi, correspondent Elliot Hannon tells our Newscast Desk that "around 1 o'clock in the afternoon local time [today], the country's northern and eastern power grids failed. ... In New Delhi, schools and office workers poured out into the afternoon drizzle to try to beat the rush home. Stop lights were dark for the second straight day and the city's metro system again failed."

According to the BBC, "the breakdown has hit a large swathe of the country including Delhi, Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh and Rajasthan states in the north, and West Bengal, Bihar, Orissa and Jharkhand in the east."