A power outage hit four regions of the Kingdom, Wednesday, outraging residents and disrupting work at factories. Saudi Electricity Company (SEC) said the power outage was caused by a glitch in the supply network, forcing the shut down of three electricity units in the Eastern Province and two stations in Al-Qassim and Hail. Close to 10 factories in Jubail Industrial City were without power, Al-Watan Arabic daily reported. The power cut started at 3:40 P.M. and service was restored at 8:30 P.M., SEC said. Temperatures in the Eastern Province at this time of the year reach 40°C and, without airconditioning, many people were forced to remain outdoors late into the evening. In Jubail, however, humidity was at 85 percent during the power outage. Several people were trapped for hours in elevators in office buildings in the Eastern Province, the paper said. In Buraidah, Unaizah and Al-Rass, traffic lights went dead, causing confusion and clogged roads. The outage resulted in 3,400 megawatts being lost from the network linking the Eastern and Central regions of the Kingdom. These regions account for 15 percent of the total supply of the network. According to Al-Watan, SEC's hotline, 993, for reporting electricity supply disruption was of no help during the crisis. The number was either busy or nobody would answer the phone. In 2005, 10 neighborhoods in Jeddah went without power after a power unit at the desalination plant was damaged.
