19,000,000 people left without electricity after entire country hit by blackout

A massive power outage across Chile plunged 90% of the country into complete darkness on Tuesday. Streetlights went out in the capital Santiago, while mobile phone services were knocked offline, and people were stranded in their homes without water when elevators and pumps using electricity stopped working.

The city’s metro, which carries millions of passengers daily, was closed and scores of passengers had to be evacuated from stalled carriages. In a late night television address to the nation, Chilean President Gabriel Boric said eight million homes had been affected but power had been restored to about half of them.

‘What happened today is outrageous because it’s not tolerable that one or several companies impact the everyday life of millions of Chileans, and that’s why it’s the state’s duty to hold them responsible,’ he said. A state of emergency was declared, and a curfew was established overnight from 10pm to 6am from the northern region of Arica to the southern region of Los Lagos.

‘Our first concern, and the reason for this announcement, is to ensure people’s safety,’ said interior minister Carolina Tohá. The ministry deployed thousands of soldiers across the country to help maintain order and enforce the curfew. Ms Toha ruled out a cyber attack as a cause, instead pointing to a transmission line failure in the north of the country.

Hospitals, prisons and government offices were able to continue operations thanks to emergency generators. Jose Luis Orlandini, who was eating in downtown Santiago when the outage hit, said: ‘There’s nothing. There’s no cash. No money. Nothing.’.

Footage from around the country showed passengers evacuating train stations by walking up switched-off escalators, while traffic signals were also shown to be not working. There were also long queues for buses which were still running on the city’s roads.

Maria Angelica Roman, 45, told AFP news agency: ‘They let us leave work because of the power cut, but now I don’t know how we will get home because all the buses are full.’. Authorities at Santiago International Airport said terminals had switched to emergency power but warned that ‘some flights could be impacted’.

Toha said that power should start coming back online in the ‘coming hours.’. ‘We hope that what we’ve been told will happen, that in the next few hours we’ll have electrical service back,’ she said. ‘And if that’s not the case, we’ll have to take different measures.’.

The outage hit areas from the mining-intensive north to the central and southern regions home to most of the Andean country’s population, and operations at key copper mines were affected. Chile is the world’s top copper producer. Escondida, the world’s largest copper mine, was without electricity, a source close to the matter told Reuters, while state-owned copper miner Codelco said all its mines had been affected.

The Chuquicamata, Andina, Salvador and El Teniente mines were without power, and its other mines were using backup power generation to operate on a partial basis, Codelco said. Antofagasta and Anglo American both said that their mines were operating with generators.

The blackout left several passengers stuck on a roller coaster as the ride was about to descend down the tracks at Fantasilandia, an amusement park in Santiago. The park’s management told CNN Chile that backup generators were deployed in order to restore service and remove the customers.

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