Blackout then & now

The term blackout started in Great Britain during World War II. From the outbreak of the war against Germany on September 3, 1939 until April 23, 1945, it was obligatory throughout Britain to cover all windows and skylights before dark so that no light would show outside. Even moving vehicles travelled at night with very dim lights. This was to prevent enemy planes from spotting the city and its targets. The term was introduced in the Philippines when the Japanese first bombed Manila and other places along with Pearl Harbor.

Now the term is used to mean power failure. Sad to say, it is getting to be a common occurrence. We have had three massive power failures in six months and by coincidence, two of them happened while President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo was abroad. The last blackout made practically all the offices an unfit place to work due to the sweltering heat. In short, it coincided with a heat wave. Commuters travelling in the light railway were stranded for hours!

The good news is that, according to the police and the military, it was not an act of sabotage or the work of terrorist groups. The cause, according to the National Power Corporation officials, was a series of transmission line failures that knocked off three baseload power plants at 10:15 a.m. The Philippine Stock Exchange had to close shop. So did most business establishments. The Supreme Court and the Presidential Commission on Good Government also found it expedient to wait till power is restored. So blackout does not refer to lights alone. In effect, it means that everything is at a standstill, because it is limited in scope, but the last three affected almost all of Luzon, about 40 million people, more than half of our population.

Our legislators are up in an uproar. Senators Renato Cayetano and Tessie Aquino-Oreta jointly used the term "tantamount to blackmail." While Sen. John Osmena called it "a form of psychological warfare" to justify high electricity rates. Senate President Pro Tempore Manuel Villar said that it could be a "cheap gimmick".

The thing is to call and conduct an impartial investigation on just why we are suddenly experiencing a series of blackouts. Is it purely accidental or is it a lack of proper maintenance of their facilities on the part of Napocor? Can we prevent future blackouts or are they as unavoidable as typhoons and earthquakes?

The term blackout is totally inappropriate because power outages do more harm when they happen during office hours than at night. So when they happen during daylight hours the term we should use is simply "power failure." At night, we can keep the term "blackout."