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Questions as Italy power returns
ROME, Italy (CNN) -- Electricity was restored across Italy as investigations were under way into the cause of the country's worst power failure since World War II. Initial findings show that storms may have tossed a tree branch onto power lines in Switzerland, starting a chain reaction by overloading another Swiss line and knocking out power from French lines into Italy. "After that, all connections to Italy dropped out," Rolf Schmid, spokesman for the Swiss power company Atel, told The Associated Press. Four deaths were unofficially attributed to the outage: a woman was killed in a traffic accident at an intersection where the lights had failed, two elderly woman fell down stairs in the dark in separate cases, and another elderly woman was burned by candles that fell on her. Almost all of the country's 57 million people were affected -- more than in last month's power collapse in the U.S. Northeast and Canada. But coming on a weekend night, its initial impact was less dramatic and caused less economic damage. That didn't stop an initial blame game among Italy, France and Switzerland. Italy imports almost a fifth of its electricity from France and demand is growing. Italian Industry Minister Antonio Marzano called for an investigation into the country's growing dependence on its neighbors for power. Paolo Scaroni, CEO of Italian utility company ENEL, told CNN that nuclear power imports from France are cheaper than energy production in Italy. Its imports can account for 17 percent of the country's power during the day, rising to 30 percent at night. "So, production in Italy has not increased to keep up with consumption," Scaroni added. He said anti-trust restrictions limit the amount of energy ENEL can produce, currently 50 percent of its capacity. CNN's Rome Bureau Chief Alessio Vinci said Switzerland and France blamed Italy for failing to react quickly enough, while Italian officials said they were given only four seconds to respond. Italy's reliance on importing its energy is now under the microscope, as well as Europe's deregularized energy industry. Vinci said one company is responsible for production, another for distribution and another for example, for giving permission to set up power lines or to build power plants. Electricity was restored throughout the country Monday, although there were plans to cut supplies to parts of Italy to avoid overloading the network, Andrea Bollino, chairman of the national grid GRTN, told Reuters. Italy's nationwide power blackout hit in the dead of night Sunday, creating chaos, stalling lifts and stranding travelers. Mobile phone links were badly hit, and some newspapers were unable to publish. About 110 trains carrying more than 30,000 passengers were stranded. Other trains were held at the Swiss border for more than three-and-a-half hours before power returned. First reports of the blackout came at about 3:30 a.m. (0130 GMT). Officials told CNN the entire country -- with the exception of the island of Sardinia -- lost power at some point. Eight hours later, officials said electricity had been restored to 90 percent of the country. Emergency services said the timing of the outage -- early in the morning with most of the country asleep -- kept the casualty count low. Hospitals and other emergency centers used reserve generators. The Italian blackout follows other major outages elsewhere in the world this year. On August 14 a massive blackout swept the northern and eastern United States and parts of Canada, affecting 50 million people and shutting down more than 100 power plants. (Full story) Two weeks later another outage hit London and parts of southeast England, disabling public transport at the height of the evening rush hour. (Full story) And about 4 million people were caught in a power blackout that brought the Danish capital Copenhagen and parts of southern Sweden to a standstill last week. (Full story) Italy was also hit with partial power cuts in June during the scorching summer, when air conditioners and other appliances overloaded the system. That was the first time in more than 20 years the national operator of the electrical grid ordered power cuts. CNN Rome Bureau Chief Alessio Vinci and CNN Italia's Eugenio Ciuccetti contributed to this report
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