South America left in dark by unprecedented power cut

A POWER cut left an estimated 48 million people across huge areas of South America without electricity yesterday.

All of Argentina and Uruguay and parts of Brazil, Chile and Paraguay were affected by the blackout after what was described as the collapse of a “key interconnection system”.

It was unclear what caused the early morning breakdown, but heavy rain had fallen in the region all weekend.

Edenor, the Argentinian utility distributor, said a transmission system at Yacyretá Dam on the Paraná River, near Ayolas in Paraguay, had failed “without human intervention”, forcing an automatic shutdown.

Public transport came to a halt, traffic lights went dark and the water supply was affected, with residents in Buenos Aires asked to ration drinking water because a filtration plant had shut down.

Hospitals and some airports were running on generators and there were long queues at petrol stations. People used social media to share photographs and video footage of cities in darkness before dawn broke. “The funny part is that we don’t have electricity, but we have internet in our phones,” one resident of Buenos Aires told CNN.

“Everything came to a halt. Elevators, water pumps, everything. We were left adrift,” said another.

Alejandra Martínez, a spokesman for Edesur, the Argentinian electricity company, said the extent of the power cut was unprecedented.

“There is a complete blackout in Argentina, she said. “This is the first time something like this has happened across the entire country.”

By yesterday evening, about 500,000 homes had been reconnected.

Gustavo Lopetegui, the Argentinian secretary of energy, said work to turn on power had begun in parts of the country, but restoring the entire system would take hours. Last night, the country’s Ministry of Civil Protection estimated that parts of the service would be restored within eight hours.

The power failure came on a day when people in parts of Argentina were heading to the polls for local elections.