SANTiago, Chile (AP) — Chilean power providers scrambled to restore service on Tuesday after 90% of the country plummeted into the darkness, bringing commuters to successive knocks on cell services offline, numbing business and daily life.
The scale of the blackout seemed to have been caught by the authorities. The government declared an emergency with a forced night curfew that lasts until 6am on Wednesday.
“Our initial concern and the reason for this announcement is to ensure the safety of people,” Interior Minister Carolina Toha said by announcing exceptional measures. The ministry deployed thousands of soldiers across the country to maintain order and enforce curfews.
The mobile phone service flashed offline. The world’s largest copper mine suspension work. People complained of a lack of water as the electric pump stopped working. Emergency generators helped hospitals and government agencies continue to operate.
But the lights – and on hot summer nights in the Southern Hemisphere, air conditioners and fans keep people cool, starting to return to the spurt seven hours after the electrical failure first hit. Cheers roar in the city.
Around 11pm, electricity was restored to about half of households affected by 8 million, President Gabriel Borick said.
“What happened today is outrageous,” Borick said at the address of a late-night television show. “It is unacceptable that one or more companies will affect the daily lives of millions of Chileans.”
The National Electrical Coordinator, a Chilean grid operator, said disruptions have occurred at the high-voltage backbone transmission line that powers the Atacama Desert in northern Chile to the Santiago capital of the country’s central valley.
Operator President Juan Carlos Olmedo said the region’s issues began a long-distance chain reaction of overload and plant closures until a massive blackout that reached 90% of Chilean harbor at the northernmost tip of Arica to the Agricultural Area in Los Lagos to the south.
“The electrical system didn’t work the way it should have,” he said. The specific causes of the disorder are under investigation. Authorities exclude cyberattacks or criminal activity of any kind.
Throughout Chile, traffic lights became dark, trains stopped, and ATMs stopped. The soccer game was cancelled, classes were cancelled, and the concert was postponed. Police officers and civilians worked together to direct traffic. The gas station could not pump.
From restaurants and bars to cinemas, businesses have lost their money. The desperate crowd was stuck in a deadly subway car. The elderly were worried that they could not leave their apartment because the elevator had broken down.
“It all stopped, there’s confusion,” said Santiago writer and resident Jorge Calderon.
Chile’s national disaster response service Senapred said the power supply disruptions have caused outages in 14 of the country’s 16 regions, including Santiago, a city of around 8.4 million people.
Toha said hospitals, prisons and government buildings are using backup generators to keep essential equipment operating. Authorities have evacuated passengers from dark tunnels and metro stations in Santiago and elsewhere in the country, including Valparaiso’s coastal tourist hotspots.
Social media videos shared from all over Chile are the country’s long ribbons, spanning 4,300 kilometers (more than 2,600 miles) along the South Pacific coast, showing massive disruptions at the intersection as the intersection failed, showing people must use their mobile phones as a torch for the subway, and police helped evacuate the building.
Transport Minister Juan Karos Munoz urged people to stay home and said, “We have a transportation system that is not working properly, so it’s not a good time to go out.”
Officials at Santiago International Airport said the terminal has switched to emergency power, but warned that “some flights could be affected.”
Some copper mines in the Andean countries were closed due to shortages of electricity, while others continued to operate using auxiliary forces. Codelco, the world’s largest copper producer, said the blackout “had an impact on all operations” without elaborating.
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Batschke reported from Sao Paulo. Isabel Debre of Buenos Aires, Argentina, contributed to this report.
