Blackout Blues: Power Out in London
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: London commuters did not get a repeat of the blackout blues this morning, but the power outage has already sparked a blame game. Paula Hancocks reports live from London. Good morning -- Paula.</s>PAULA HANCOCKS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: The power cut lasted just 13 minutes, but the repercussions went on for hours here in London on Thursday. Hundreds of thousands of commuters were stuck on the Underground. People could not get home as there was gridlock on the roads. The power is now very much back on and the Underground is back to normal. So now the game is who to blame. Ken Livingston, the London Mayor, is saying that it was an absolute disgrace, and he's calling for an inquiry into why this happened and why London, basically, came to a standstill for a few hours on Thursday night. Now anti-privatization lobbyists are having a field day with this. They say the reason there was so many problems is because the Underground is part privatized now. Back in April, the maintenance and the upgrade of the Underground system was handed over to Metro Net, a private company, who has promised to invest about $13.5 billion into the system over the next 7.5 years. It's a 140-year-old system and desperately needs money invested into its infrastructure, according to pretty much everybody, although Bob Kiley, the Commissioner for Transport for London, and also the former head of the U.S. Subway does say that it's not necessarily privatization that's the problem, it the part privatization, part state-owned situation that's the problem. You need one company or one state that is in control of the whole situation. Also the fact that electricity companies are now private, some people are saying, is a big problem. I spoke to National Grid just a little while ago, and they gave me the reason that they believe this power cut happened. They say they are still looking into it, but they think technical faults occurred on the transmission network. They say it was highly irregular. There were two separate incidents that happened coincidentally and it's extremely rare and not likely to happen again. But of course some people are saying the fact that it is privatized now, the electricity system here in the U.K., and these companies are just for profit for their shareholders and for their chief executives as opposed to pumping all the money back into the system itself is to blame as well. Paula Hancocks, CNN, London. TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com