Power outage leaves most of Chile in darkness for hours

SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) — Electricity providers across Chile scrambled to restore service Tuesday after a sweeping blackout plunged 90% of the country into darkness, stranding commuters, knocking cell service offline and paralyzing businesses and daily life.

The scale of the power outage appeared to take authorities off guard. The government declared a state of emergency alongside a mandatory nighttime curfew that will last until 6 a.m. Wednesday.

“Our first concern, and the reason for this announcement, is to ensure people’s safety,” Interior Minister Carolina Tohá said in announcing the exceptional measures. The ministry deployed thousands of soldiers across the country to help maintain order and enforce the curfew.

Mobile phone services blinkered offline. The world’s largest copper mine suspended operations. People complained of water shortages as pumps running on electricity stopped working. Emergency generators helped hospitals and government offices continue operating.

But the lights — and, on a hot summer night in the Southern Hemisphere, the air conditioning and fans that keep people cool — began to return in spurts seven hours after the electric failure first struck. Cheers rung out on the streets where lights flickered back on.

At around 11 p.m., power was restored to around half of the 8 million affected households, said President Gabriel Boric.

“What happened today is outrageous,” Boric said in a late-night televised address. “It's unacceptable that one or several companies impact the everyday life of millions of Chileans.”

The National Electrical Coordinator, Chile’s grid operator, said a disruption had occurred in a high-voltage backbone transmission line that carries power from the Atacama Desert of northern Chile to the capital of Santiago in the country’s central valley.

The operator's president, Juan Carlos Olmedo, said that the regional problem started a long-distance chain reaction of overloads and plant shutdowns until it became a giant blackout that hit 90% of Chile's 19 million people, from the northernmost Chilean port of Arica to the southern Los Lagos agricultural region.

“The electric system did not operate the way it should have," he said. The specific cause of the failure remains under investigation. Officials have ruled out a cyberattack or any kind of criminal activity.

All over Chile, traffic lights darkened, trains stopped and ATMs shut down. Soccer matches were called off, classes were canceled and concerts postponed. Police officers and civilians worked together to direct traffic. Petrol stations were left unable to pump.

Businesses, from restaurants and bars to movie theaters, lost money. Frantic crowds became stranded in stalled subway cars. Older adults fretted they would not be able to leave apartment buildings because elevators were out of order.

“Everything has stopped, there's chaos,” said Jorge Calderón, a writer and resident of Santiago.

Chile’s national disaster response service, Senapred, said the disruption in the power supply caused an outage across 14 of the country's 16 regions, including Santiago, a city of some 8.4 million people, where authorities said there would be no subway service until further notice.

Tohá said hospitals, prisons and government buildings were using backup generators to keep essential equipment operating. Officials evacuated passengers from darkened tunnels and subway stations in Santiago and elsewhere in the country, including the coastal tourist hotspot of Valparaiso.

Videos on social media shared from across Chile, a long ribbon of a country stretching 4,300 kilometers (over 2,600 miles) along the southern Pacific coast, showed mass confusion at intersections as traffic lights failed, people having to use their mobile phones as torches in the underground metro and police dispatched to help evacuate buildings.

Transport Minister Juan Carlos Muñoz urged people to stay home, saying it’s “not a good time to go out since we have a transport system that is not operating normally" with just a fraction of the traffic lights functioning nationwide.

Authorities at Santiago International Airport said terminals had switched to emergency power but warned that “some flights could be impacted.”

Some copper mines in the Andean nation shut down for lack of electricity while others used auxiliary power to continue operations. The world’s biggest copper producer, state-owned mining company Codelco, said the power outage had “affected all operations,” without elaborating.

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Batschke reported from Sao Paulo. Isabel DeBre in Buenos Aires, Argentina, contributed to this report.