Date: 31-Mar-09
Country: AUSTRALIA

SYDNEY - A severe power blackout brought chaos to downtown Sydney on Monday afternoon, causing peak-hour traffic jams as traffic signals failed and leaving dozens of workers stranded in lifts as they tried to make their way home.

Failures at four high-voltage power cables virtually paralysed Australia's biggest city, with the Sydney Harbour tunnel closed to traffic and the Sydney Opera House forced to cancel all performances for the evening, local media said.

Power was restored at about 6:40 pm (0740 GMT).

Office towers lost all power, paralysing some elevators, at around 4:45 pm. Up to 70,000 homes and businesses, including some inner suburbs, were blacked out, said state-funded broadcaster ABC, which was running on back-up power.

Emergency services were called to deal with dozens of people trapped in lifts.

The main stock exchange had closed by the time of the blackout.

EnergyAustralia, which distributes power to Sydney city, said four power cables that supply very large electricity sub-stations had detected a problem and had automatically shut down for safety reasons.

"We've been able to get power flowing back into three cables that supply the city," a spokesman told AAP news agency.

The blackout comes two days after Sydney deliberately turned off its lights for Earth Hour 2009, when cities world-wide plunged into darkness for an hour to highlight climate change.

(Reporting by Mark Bendeich; Editing by Jeremy Laurence)

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