A major power cut across southern France left around 160,000 homes without electricity on Saturday and impacted the town of Cannes, which is currently hosting its annual international film festival.
The power outage in the French department of Alpes-Maritimes began at around 10 a.m. local time (4 a.m. ET), France’s electricity transmission network RTE said in a post on X. By 4:30 p.m. local time (10:30 a.m. ET), power was restored to the region, RTE said in an update.
Officials have suggested that the outage was caused deliberately.
Sébastien Leroy, the mayor of Mandelieu-La Napoule, a commune just south-west of Cannes, said in a Facebook post that it appears the power cut was caused by a “double act of sabotage.”
A fire broke out at an electrical substation in the nearby commune of Tanneron around 4:30 a.m. local time Saturday (10:30 p.m. Friday ET), and later in the morning, an electricity pylon suffered “major damage,” according to a statement released by the Alpes-Maritimes local government.
Laurent Hottiaux, prefect of Alpes-Maritimes, condemned “these serious acts of damage” in “the strongest terms,” the statement said.
France’s national gendarmerie are “looking into the likelihood of a fire being started deliberately,” a spokesperson told Reuters. No arrests have yet been made in relation to the power outage, the spokesperson said.
Saturday is the last day of this year’s Cannes Film Festival, which has been held in the town for 78 years, with the closing ceremony scheduled to take place in the evening.
The festival used generators to ensure that screenings were still able to go ahead, French public broadcaster FranceInfo reported.
The Palais des Festivals, where Cannes’ main events take place, “switched to an independent power supply, allowing all scheduled events and screenings, including the closing ceremony, to proceed as planned and under normal conditions,” the festival said in a statement, according to Reuters.
Organizers of the festival told CNN affiliate BFMTV that there were “no worries” that the power outage would affect the closing ceremony, which will see the winners of the festival’s top prizes announced.
The outage affected two screenings on Saturday morning for about five minutes, then they resumed, the organizers said, according to BFMTV.
This story has been updated.
Cannes film festival impacted after major power cut hits southern France Egypt Independent.
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