Lights are coming back on across Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay after a massive blackout on Sunday. The region’s electrical grid collapse hit tens of millions of people. Authorities are still mostly in the dark about what caused the failure.
The collapse began about 7 a.m. for Argentina’s population of 44 million. Some residents of neighboring Uruguay and Paraguay also woke up to Father’s Day in the dark.
In Buenos Aires, Argentina, public transportation halted, phone and internet communications were disrupted, and water supplies stopped. Patients dependent on home medical equipment were urged to go to hospitals that had generators. Power was fully restored by Sunday night. But the outage stirred questions about Argentina’s power system at a time when the country is going through deep economic crisis.
Energy Secretary Gustavo Lopetegui says electrical failures happen in other countries but adds that a chain of events took place later, causing total disruption. Lopetegui doesn’t discount the possibility of a cyberattack but says it’s unlikely.
Argentine President Mauricio Macri promises a thorough investigation into the outage. The conservative leader has struggled to tame Argentina’s high inflation and poverty rates. Sunday’s blackout could trigger protests against Macri’s government just as he seeks re-election.
Argentina has a history of blackouts—but none like Sunday’s failure, in which power outages were geographically widespread. Only the southern archipelago of Tierra del Fuego, which isn’t connected to the main power grid, remained unaffected.
In Paraguay, power in rural communities in the south was cut. Uruguay’s energy company blames its country’s failure on the faulty Argentine system.
Several Argentine provinces had elections for governor on Sunday. Elections proceeded with voters using cellphones to illuminate their ballots. Meanwhile, residents of Argentina and Uruguay took to social media to post pictures of their cities in the dark. Julieta Dodda, a saleswoman in Buenos Aires, says, “I saw many online who joked: 'Happy Father’s Day from Edesur and Edenor, which are our electricity companies.'”
(Technicians of Edenor electricity company work to fix a generator during a blackout in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Sunday, June 16, 2019. AP Photo/Tomas F. Cuesta)
