Electricity was restored across Italy as investigations were under way into the cause of the country's worst power failure since World War II. Initial findings show that storms may have tossed a tree branch onto power lines in Switzerland, starting a chain reaction by overloading another Swiss line and knocking out power from French lines into Italy.
"After that, all connections to Italy dropped out," Rolf Schmid, spokesman for the Swiss power company Atel, told The Associated Press.
Four deaths were unofficially attributed to the outage: a woman was killed in a traffic accident at an intersection where the lights had failed, two elderly woman fell down stairs in the dark in separate cases, and another elderly woman was burned by candles that fell on her. Almost all of the country's 57 million people were affected -- more than in last month's power collapse in the U.S. Northeast and Canada. But coming on a weekend night, its initial impact was less dramatic and caused less economic damage.
That didn't stop an initial blame game among Italy, France and Switzerland. Italy imports almost a fifth of its electricity from France and demand is growing.
Italian Industry Minister Antonio Marzano called for an investigation into the country's growing dependence on its neighbors for power.
Paolo Scaroni, CEO of Italian utility company ENEL, told CNN that nuclear power imports from France are cheaper than energy production in Italy. Its imports can account for 17 percent of the country's power during the day, rising to 30 percent at night.
"So, production in Italy has not increased to keep up with consumption," Scaroni added.
He said anti-trust restrictions limit the amount of energy ENEL can produce, currently 50 percent of its capacity.
