What Were You Doing When Out? the Lights Went We don't realize how much we depend on electricity. How often we think how wonderful it is that we can have lights when do we can keep our food cold in the the sun goes down? Or, that refrigerator? We take all these things for granted-we don't even think about them. electricity. On July 30, 2012, a power outage in northern India left 67o million people without Also, 27 The extremely hot summer caused the demand for electricity to reach record levels. percent of India's power is lost because of bad transmission or because it is stolen. Traffic became chaos, and hundreds of electric trains stopped running. Cities like people w Delhi turned dark, and people suffered in the terrible heat. Here is what two said about the blackout. Raj (37) I was driving my car when the blackout happened. The stoplights went out, so cars were blocking the intersections and traffic wasn't moving I was waiting in traffic for hours. But, at least, cool because I was running the car's air conditioner. I was Asha (21) I was working in my family's restaurant when the electricity went out. Power failures are common, so my family has a generator. It provides power for our refrigerator. So, we were selling food throughout the blackout by the light of candles. It was very romantic.