A major power blackout hit Bahrain yesterday, leaving the five governorates in a hot sweat. The power supply was gradually restored towards the evening.

Officials said the morning blackout was the worst power outage to hit Bahrain, adding that one of the key turbines at Al Heidd power plant, which is Bahrain's main power station, blew up early in the day.

Shaikh Abdullah Bin Salman Al Khalifa, Electricity Minister, said the outage was caused by a power surge during routine maintenance at the Alba aluminium smelter.

He said the sudden surge of 400 megawatts had travelled from Alba's power station to the Al Heidd plant. He said a committee comprising officials from the ministry and Alba had been formed to investigate how the power outage happened.

Most residents - sweltering in temperatures that reached 40?C -quit their homes, with some taking refuge in their air-conditioned cars, causing congestion on the roads. Others headed to the beaches.

Police were positioned at traffic junctions to monitor the flow, but there was still gridlock throughout Manama. People lined up by the thousands at the few petrol stations that were operating.

Shaikh Khalifa Bin Salman Al Khalifa, Bahrain Prime Minister, visited the main power control centre to check on the progress in bringing the power back on and also the Interior Ministry to monitor measures to control road traffic, BNA said.

Bahrain's biggest firms functioned normally thanks to generators. Aluminium smelter Alba, the biggest in the Middle East, was unaffected as was the Bahrain Petroleum Company.

Many other large offices in Manama also switched to their own generators, but parts of the industrial sector were reportedly brought to a standstill.

Shopping malls and other businesses were closed, as were some hospitals. Business sources estimated that the losses would to run into several million dinars.

Power began returning to some areas of the island early in the evening.

"One of the six generators has been brought back on line and we are working on the rest," an engineer at the Al Heidd plant said.

"We know that it (the fault) was not deliberate, just technical," another engineer said. Officials said power would be back to normal today.

A spokesman for the US Navy's Fifth Fleet, which has its headquarters in Bahrain, said it had power generators and was not affected by the outage.

The 700-megawatt Al Heidd plant, built by French group Alstom Power, is the biggest in Bahrain.

BLACKOUT SPARKS CHAOS
Residents seek shelter in air-conditioned cars
* Deprived of air conditioning in their homes and offices, residents took refuge in their cars, driving around already gridlocked streets. Some headed to Saudi Arabia over a causeway linking the two countries.
* Some residents, believing they had been cut off for non-payment of bills, reportedly came to pay in person at the main electricity company offices, but were sent away because staff were not able to operate their computers.
* Police took control of the flow of vehicles as traffic lights were not functioning. Petrol stations and bank ATMs were also not working.