On Saturday, November 4, 2006, a planned and routine disconnection of the Ems powerline crossing in Northwest Germany was carried out to allow a ship to pass beneath the overhead cables. The disconnection resulted in minor changes in load flows. During the next thirty minutes, the situation changed rapidly with unexpected load flows threatening the N1 safety limit. An uncoordinated attempt to re-route the load flow resulted in the tripping of the Landesbergen-Wehrendorf 380kV interconnector. Twenty eight seconds later, an electrical blackout had cascaded across Europe extending from Poland in the north-east, to the Benelux countries and France in the west, through to Portugal, Spain and Morocco in the south-west, and across to Greece and the Balkans in the south-east.