RTImagine what happens when electricity is cut off nationwide in a country of 160 million people. In Bangladesh, everyday life was brought to a standstill on Saturday as factories, hospitals, and homes plunged into darkness or had to rely on generators.
Even the prime minister’s official residence was left with no electricity, as the small but extremely densely populated South Asian country experienced one of the worst blackouts in world’s recent history.
“The national grid collapsed so the whole country lost power,” Reuters quoted Mohammad Saiful Islam, a director of the state-run Bangladesh Power Development Board, as saying. “Our repeated efforts to restore electricity across Bangladesh failed repeatedly.”
Local media reported that the blackout was caused by the failure of a transmission line transporting electricity from India. India’s Power Grid Corp, however, said there were no problems on their side of the border.
“I can’t run my shop without power and no one seems to care,” Mohammad Ripon, owner of a grocery store in the capital of Dhaka, told the agency. “It has been about eight hours now and still there is no word on when the power will come back.”
The airport and main hospital in Dhaka are running on emergency generators.
Garment factory owner Anwarul Alam Chowdhury said he was able to get 2-3 hours’ worth of power out of his generator, but then had to halt the factory’s output.
“This is a big slap for my business,” he said, explaining that many other factories were forced to shut down production as well.
Bangladesh’s plunge into darkness provides a glimpse into a recently debunked hoax about NASA confirming six days of ‘total darkness’ in December.
The hoax went viral on Twitter, leaving many people shocked and bewildered as to how the experience would feel.
That is Asia were the power does go out. They can handle it there and the crime rate don’t go up. You open the windows and pull the mosquito netting across them. Light a lanten with bug oil in it to keep the mosquitoes out, fire up the genorator and rotate it to keep what is froze in the freezer froze and the fridge to keep what there is cool. Put what you need in the cooler box with ice to eat. Run the genorator for 2 hours shut it off and restart it in 4 hours to keep all cold and cool. Food loss and spoilage is the big problem in the tropics. We cook outside on the grill and burner to keep heat out of the house. 7 hour power outages happen. And let a typhoon hit you can be some days with out power. Keep a 5 gal. can of gas extra if you know a typhoon is comeing and a extra 5 gal. bottle of water or so ready. All other water comes from the neighborhood hand pump. Wait in line take your turn there. No big deal 8 hours with out power. The big deal is what is rotting under walls after a typhoon or such.
So some of our textile imports will be a little late then.