If you found yourself in either Spain or Portugal yesterday like I did – it was the latter for me – you may have thought you had been teleported to a certain 2007 post-apocalyptic Will Smith movie. A major power outage across the Iberian peninsula, which also shut down most communication networks, led to some insane scenes.

Picture this: dead traffic lights and major traffic chaos, banks shutting doors as ATMs broke down, restaurants and cafés suddenly unable to prepare food and take payments, huge lines of people stockpiling canned goods, bottled water and toilet paper in dark supermarkets, as well as similarly long queues at petrol stations across the country.

On top of that, mobile communication networks were also down, meaning many people couldn’t reach their loved ones or access the internet to check what the hell was actually going on.

Those of us who had access to the radio were anxiously listening for new government announcements, but information was scarce. It was mayhem, and, in many ways, quite scary.

Then slowly through the evening and night, the power was restored across Iberia, putting an end to a decisively pandemonium-filled day.

Now that we can flick the light switch back on again, the real impact of having two large European economies entirely shut down for nearly a day is beginning to emerge – as well as questions about what the shocking event tells us about a country’s resilience and the ability to weather this type of acute crisis.

Communication breakdown

The widespread communications shutdown meant a lot of people didn’t know what was going on – or how long it would last. While government websites were down, fake news quickly started making the rounds on social media, including that the countries were victims of a cyberattack by Russia.

These conspiracy theories contributed to people running to the shops – the few that managed to stay running due to generator back-ups – and panic-buying essential pantry goods, as well as ‘survival kit’ objects such as torches, portable gas stoves, and wind-up radios. 

But there are endless stories and videos of people who were unable to buy food because shelves had emptied by the time they got to the stores or card machines had failed to work. 

It was also strikingly clear that those who had cash were far more likely to be able to buy stuff than those relying solely on card payments, as most of us do these days. And the event reinforced the gap between those who can afford to stockpile and those who can’t.

Another issue the power outage highlighted was the fact that countries’ interconnectedness can sometimes turn out to be more of a hindrance than a help. For instance, Portugal’s energy is highly dependent on its neighbour’s sources, meaning it lost about 30% of its electricity resources in a matter of seconds.

But the same could be said for everything else that the Iberian peninsula produces and exports – fruit, vegetables, cereals and olive oil, to name just a few essential goods – and that the UK and the rest of Europe significantly rely on, day in, day out.

A source working in logistics at one of Portugal’s biggest ports tells The Grocer the chaos has continued into Tuesday. Not all systems are back up and lots of deliveries piled up in the hours the outage lasted. 

Any disruption to our current just-in-time supply chains can take days, if not weeks, to recover, costing businesses time and money.

Containers will miss their ‘cut-off’ timings for deliveries at other ports, meaning “significant” delays to shipments, the source said – many of which are heading to the UK. 

So this also raises the question: how prepared is Britain for an event of this scale? Not just at a country level, but at a regional and community level? That was exactly what UK food industry expert Professor Tim Lang, sought out to answer in his food security report to the National Preparedness Commission earlier this year. He found out that the UK was “not prepared” for major sudden shocks to its food supply chains.

He argued the government needed a “proactive” rather than “reactive” approach to keeping the nation fed in both ordinary and extraordinary times (a nationwide blackout surely falls in the latter category).

But how much effort has been devoted into communicating helpful information to the public, building local resilience groups, and encouraging communities to be more self-sufficient? Close to none, experts have warned.

Elsewhere in the EU, friends tell me they’ve begun compiling 72-hour emergency kits in case of a natural disaster, cyberattack or war, following recommendations from the Dutch government last month.

The European Commission also caught some flak after spoofing the famous Vogue ‘What’s In My Bag’ series with its own ‘survival kit edition’ last month, but driving home the message that civil defence must increase seems especially vital in these uncertain times.

As climate change effects and geopolitical tensions intensify, a country’s food resilience could potentially be under threat from many different fronts – and so-called ‘extraordinary’ events can and will happen.

Let Monday’s events be a reminder that feeding a country’s population in those cases should be top of the priority list for governments around the globe.

Topics