The lights are back on in Italy after a massive electricity blackout brought ordinary life to a standstill.

Sunday’s powercut compares with the one that struck New York and Canada last month. In both Italy and North America, over 50 million people were affected.

Inclement weather was largely to blame for the fault. The powercut may have originated outside of Italy. Some reports claim a single tree damaged a power line in Switzerland supplying Italy with power from France.

Italy depends on other countries for much of its power supply from France and Switzerland.

Powercuts were first reported around 03:20 local time in Rome.

Over 30,000 rail passengers were stranded across the country after more than 110 trains were brought to a standstill.

Four people are believed to have died as a consequence of the outage. A man was killed in a traffic accident at a crossroads where the lights failed, an elderly woman burned to death when candles fell on her, and two elderly women fell down stairs.