Santiago (AFP) – Chileans were able to return to a sense of normalcy on Wednesday after a curfew expired and authorities said power was restored to most homes following the country’s worst blackout in well over a decade.
The massive, rare outage struck on Tuesday afternoon, leaving millions without power, and causing transport chaos in the capital Santiago.
President Gabriel Boric blamed the grid operators for the system’s failure. He had declared a state of emergency and imposed a curfew over much of the country.
After the curfew expired at 0900 GMT Wednesday, AFP saw cars, buses and people out in the streets and the metro operating normally in Santiago.
Early Wednesday, “90 percent of (electricity) consumption was restored” to homes, the power system’s operator said in a statement.
According to the Senapred disaster response agency, the outage had affected an area stretching all the way from Arica in the long, narrow South American country’s north to Los Lagos in the south – home to more than 90 percent of Chile’s 20 million people.
Interior Minister Carolina Toha ruled out sabotage as the reason for the power loss, which began at 3:16 pm in the middle of the southern hemisphere summer.
In Santiago, out-of-service traffic lights caused major gridlock, with some people having to walk for hours under a hot sun to reach their homes.
The metro company, which transports 2.3 million passengers every day, said workers had been deployed to all stations on Tuesday “to support safe evacuations.”
The Chilevision broadcaster showed footage of people trapped on a mechanical ride several feet high at an amusement park in Santiago before being rescued.
The country’s hospital system and prisons were operating on emergency generators during the blackout.