Sydney undergoes chaotic Earth Hour reprise

Sydney – where the first Earth Hour was held in 1997 – experienced an involuntary re-run of the event, with a power failure plunging large parts of the city into darkness and chaos for some two and a half hours.

A power cable fault resulted in Sydney's central business district and eastern suburbs plunged into darkness at peak hours on Monday afternoon. Some 70,000 homes and businesses were affected. Hitting about 4.45pm, the blackouts extended from Circular Quay, where the Opera House was forced to cancel performances, to Redfern and Chippendale, affecting some buildings and sparing others with seemingly arbitrary logic. 

The Sydney Harbour Tunnel was closed, and traffic on the Harbour Bridge came to a halt. Trains continued to run, with CityRail agreeing to recognise prepaid bus tickets to help those affected by the outage of more than 100 sets of traffic lights. 

EnergyAustralia yesterday said faults on four major power cables were to blame for the outages. A power surge along one of the four cables, which connects North Sydney to the city, is believed to have caused all four to malfunction. By 8:22pm, three had been restored. "These are major power cables - they're 132,000 volt cables and they supply two major sub-stations in the CBD," an EnergyAustralia spokesman said. 

The NSW Fire Brigade fielded 40 emergency calls within 15 minutes of the blackout, nearly all for people trapped in lifts. Others made the most of the blackouts, retreating to bars and restaurants across the city where proprietors had resorted to service by candlelight.

On Tuesday, the state government apologised to residents, but insisted that the response from emergency services workers was excellent.