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AMSTERDAM (AP) — Trains, trams and planes ground to a temporary halt Friday in and around Amsterdam as a huge power outage hit the Dutch capital and surrounding towns.
Dutch electricity network administrator TenneT said that a large part of North Holland province, which is home to some 2.7 million people, was hit by the outage. TenneT said the cause was an outage at a high-voltage power station in the town of Diemen, just outside Amsterdam.
By late morning, the company said it was gradually restoring power to the region.
Schiphol Airport halted all inbound flights and only a limited number of planes were able to leave during the power cut, according to an airport spokeswoman who declined to be named. The airport tweeted that flight schedules were "seriously disrupted."
The airport could not say how many flights and passengers were affected. Schiphol tweeted later that power was restored at 10:45 a.m. (0945 GMT) and it was working to clear the backlog of flights.
The national railroad service said that no trains were running in and around Amsterdam. Most trams in the city also stopped.
At Amsterdam's Museum Square, fire fighters had to free a man, woman and young child in a stroller who were trapped in an elevator at an underground supermarket near the city's Stedelijk and Van Gogh museums. An AP photographer at the scene said lights remained on at the museums.
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Mike Corder in The Hague, Netherlands, contributed.
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