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In the DarkA few scattered rooms in a neighborhood in Kolkata (Calcutta), India, remained lit on Tuesday, despite a massive power grid failure that left 680 million people—double the population of the United States—without electricity for several hours.(Related: "India Power Outage Spotlights Energy Planning Failure")The blackout—one of history's worst—lasted two days. An initial, 15-hour outage on Monday was fixed, but shortly after, at 1 p.m. local time Tuesday, a far larger collapse swept the country."Even before we could figure out the reason for yesterday's failure, we had more grid failures today," R. N. Nayak, chairperson of the state-run Power Grid Corporation, told Reuters.The outage—which affected 22 of the country's 28 states—stalled hundreds of trains, led to massive traffic delays, and stranded 200 coal miners in West Bengal when electricity stopped flowing to mine-shaft elevators.—Ker Than
Photograph by Bikas Das, AP

Pictures: India Power Outage Darkens Cities, Stops Trains

One of history's worst blackouts darkened cities, delayed trains, and forced many to use backup generators for two days.

August 2, 2012