Trains were left stranded in the Port of Rotterdam for a couple of hours in the morning and early afternoon on Tuesday, 3 September, as a result of a power outage. The outage reportedly started around 10:00 and was resolved by 13:00.
The outage affected the areas of Brielle, Oostvoorne, Hoek van Holland and Europoort, an area with lots of oil and chemical industries. Companies such as BP and Exxon could reportedly no longer ship their products via rail. Alongside BP and Exxon were another 11,000 clients of electricity network manager Stedin. Whereas it restored electricity to the port, it also highlighted that the cause was still unknown.
A representative of the Port of Rotterdam told RailFreight.com that trains were reportedly stranded on the rails throughout the affected areas of the port.
Situation remains unclear
Around noon, ore transshipment company Ertsoverslagbedrijf Europoort told RailFreight.com that some electricity had been restored, but the situation remained unclear. The representative of the company explained that the power had been out for at least two hours, shutting down transport services in the port completely. However, the Port of Rotterdam noted that ships were not affected.
Almost all companies were not reachable for comment during the morning, suggesting that the electricity outage severed phone connections as well.