Cannes Film Festival struck by major power outage weeks after blackouts sparked chaos in Spain and southern France
Cannes Film Festival has been struck by a major power outage, sparking disruption to the event as it prepared to hand out its prestigious top prize.
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About 160,000 households in the Alpes-Maritimes department lost power on Saturday.
A high-voltage line reportedly feel in the morning, electricity network operator RTE said on X.
The power cut came just hours after a fire at an electrical substation near Cannes overnight, weakening the grid.
Confirming the outage, Cannes Film Festival organisers said early activities were disrupted, adding that Palais des Festivals — the main venue — was forced to switch to an independent power supply.
It said in a statement: “All scheduled events and screenings, including the Closing Ceremony, will proceed as planned and under normal conditions.
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"At this stage, the cause of the outage has not yet been identified. Restoration efforts are underway."
Meanwhile, screenings at the Cineum, one of the festival’s satellite venues, were briefly halted.
Traffic lights in parts of Cannes and the surrounding city of Antibes stopped working after 10 am, causing to traffic jams while train services were also disrupted.
Most shops along Canne's Croisette were also closed
It comes just weeks after parts of southern France, Spain and Portugal were all affect by a major power outage that saw entire airports and metro systems come to a halt.
Portugal's national electric company, REN, said a fire in the south-west of France may have been the cause of the outage.
The fire damaged a high-voltage power line between Perpignan and eastern Narbonne.
Jack was on the west coast of Portugal - and told LBC of an "eerie atmosphere" in the shops.
"We have lost power and lost water, most about an hour now. But we've found a nice little local supermarket," he said."There's a group of nine of us, and we've stocked up on water and food. We're holding out for information because we haven't had any yet."