This is a list of notable wide-scale power outages. To be included, the power outage must conform to all of the following criteria: The outage must not be planned by the service provider. The outage must affect at least 1,000 people and last at least one hour. There must be at least 1,000,000 person-hours of disruption.
Definition of decimate for English Language Learners. : 1  to destroy a large number of (plants, animals, people, etc.) : 2  to severely damage or destroy a large part of (something)
But the claim that decimate should be used to mean naught but to âput to death (or destroy) one of every tenâ has deeper problems than that. For it is not at all clear that this punitive sense is indeed the earliest definition of the word.