Massive blackout in Chile: four million homes without electricity, soldiers in the streets and the Viña Festival suspended

From the northern region of Arica to the southern region of Los Lagos, in an area of ​​2,400 kilometers, some eight million homes in Chile have suffered a power cut since Tuesday at 3:16 p.m., 98.5% of the service customers. At the end of the night it was still not known what had caused the blackout that forced the Government of Gabriel Boric to declare a state of emergency due to a catastrophe and a curfew (between 10:00 p.m. and 6:00 a.m. this Wednesday). The president reported this evening from La Moneda that more than four million homes have gradually recovered their electricity. Some 3,000 soldiers have been deployed to maintain order and security, according to the Undersecretary of Defense, in an environment that shakes off the ghosts of the pandemic in the empty streets.

The authorities have not yet announced when the full service will be restored, although in some sectors of the civic district of Santiago and in other corners of the country the power has returned after a six-hour blackout. The blackout in the middle of the Chilean summer has been so extensive that, when the power has returned in some sector of the capital, shouts have been heard from the neighbors as if they were celebrating a goal. “What happened today outrages us, because it is not tolerable that the daily life of millions of Chileans is affected by the responsibility of one or several companies,” Boric said at the presidential palace. “We are going to make sure that those responsible for this emergency have to answer to the institutions,” he added.

The National Electric Coordinator (CEN) reported that the interruption of the electricity supply was caused by a disconnection of the 500 kV transmission system in the Norte Chico. The Service Recovery Plan was activated to restore consumption, but after 10:00 p.m. and after four attempts, they had not achieved their goal. The president of the CEN board of directors, Juan Carlos Olmedo, stated that the disconnection was due to “an unwanted operation in the line's control and protection system.” And that a quarter of the service has been restored and during the night it would reach 100%.

The streets were in chaos: corners without traffic lights, gas stations with closed doors, traffic accidents and ambulances stuck in traffic jams were some of the images left by the worst moment of the blackout. The Metro lines in the Metropolitan Region stopped working and the bus system was overloaded. The airports have continued to operate, but the schedules of several flights have been changed. Since the power outage, internet connectivity and telecommunications service in general have been seriously affected.

The Minister of Transport and Telecommunications, Juan Carlos Muñoz, warned in 24H that they are preparing for a situation on Wednesday in which the Santiago Metro remains stopped: “If everything goes well, tomorrow we might have the metro operational, I would prefer to be cautious and call on citizens to get information tomorrow morning, we are preparing for a situation in which there is no metro.”

The Superintendent of Electricity and Fuels (SEC), Marta Cabeza, reported that investigations have begun to determine the cause of the outage and that “there is no certainty as to the time of restoration.” After an emergency meeting, the Minister of the Interior, Carolina Tohá, said that the call is for calm. “We are not the object of an attack,” she said, but she did appear upset. “As the Government of Chile, we consider what Chileans are facing to be unacceptable.” The executive director of the National Electric Coordinator, Ernesto Huber, said that they could not rule out any hypothesis. “The investigation protocol will give us more and better information about the faults,” he stressed.

One of the aftershocks of the disaster was the suspension of the third day of the Viña del Mar International Festival due to the curfew. The news came an hour before the start of the music festival, when the gallery was already full of people who had come to see Morat, comedian Pedro Ruminot and singer Sebastián Yatra. The production announced that the artists will perform on March 1 at Quinta Vergara.