OAN Staff James Meyers
3:37pm – Tuesday, February 25th, 2025
A massive blackout in Chile left at least 19 million residents without electricity on Tuesday, forcing Chileans to be affected by the darkness.
advertisement
The affected areas reported were “Northern Arika and Parinakota regions in southern Los Lagos,” according to Chile's National Disaster Prevention and Response Services.
As of February 25th, no emergency has been reported.th2025, 3:30pm.
The blackout took place at 3:15pm local time in several parts of the country.
Home Minister Carolina Toha announced that hospitals, prisons and government buildings are switching back-up generators to make essential equipment work.
The outage was caused by a disconnection of the transmission system in the Nortechco region, according to the National Electrical Coordinator, the agency responsible for the Chilean power grid.
According to Home Minister Carolina Toha, the enormous suspension left more than 90% of the population unpowered.
At least 582,430 people have lost electricity in communes around Santiago's metropolitan area, the electricity and fuel supervisor added. The 328,488 people in Los Lagos and another 161,843 residents in Los Rios also had no power.
However, local broadcasters also reported that several cities announced power returns by 5pm local time.
Tohá logged on to X and announced that an emergency meeting is scheduled for the Disaster Risk Management Committee.
“Given the power outages occurring between the Arica, Parisacota and Los Lagos regions, I called for an immediate national #Cogrid meeting [Disaster Risk Management Committees]adopt measures to deal with emergencies and work to restore services,” she said.
At the time, Toha had insisted during a press conference that residents should be patient while the government tackles stressful issues.
“I'm calming down to understand that it's a system failure and that we're not the target of attacks and that we need to recover our services quickly,” she said.
The suspension closed several metro services, causing residents to use buses.
Also, due to lack of power, the streetlights went out and more issues have arisen on the road, including at least one crash between the car and the minivan.
Additionally, residents also reported that taxis and Uber had rapidly spiked their operating prices in order to make financial use of the outages.
Transport Minister Juan Carlos Munoz said at least 4,500 buses will be on the streets on Wednesday morning if power does not return on Tuesday night.
Arturo Meri Nobenites, also in Santiago, was still operating.
Escondida, the world's largest copper mine, had no electricity yet. Reuters.
Organizers of the Vina del Mar International Song Festival, the country's leading festival, had held meetings with authorities to decide whether the show should be cancelled. The festival should end on Friday.
Please provide us with information! Receive break news and explode directly into your inbox for free. Please subscribe here. https://www.oann.com/alerts
The following ads
Share this post!
