Approximately 19 million people are thought to be without electricity after Chile has been engulfed by a nationwide power blackout.
The blackout has affected the northern Arica and Parinacota region to the southern Los Lagos region, according to the government sources.
Although the exact scale of the outage is not yet known, the world’s largest copper mine, Escondida, has been left without power, a source close to the matter told Reuters.
LATAM Airlines has also said that a number of flights have been disrupted by the blackout, and has urged passengers to check their journey status.
Arounf 80% of the country is thought to be affected (Picture: Reuters)
The National Electrical Coordinator, the agency in charge of Chile’s power grid, said the outage was caused by a disconnection in the transmission system in the Norte Chico region.
It is estimated that 80.1 percent of customers were left in the dark.
In a post on X, Interior Minister, Carolina Tohá said an emergency meeting had been scheduled with the Disaster Risk Management Committees to tackle the problem.
‘Given the power outage that is occurring between the regions of Arica and Parinacota and Los Lagos, I have called for an immediate meeting of the National #Cogrid [Disaster Risk Management Committees], where we will adopt measures to address the emergency and work on restoring the service,’ she announced.
Streetlights in the capital of Santiago have been wiped out by the outage, and witnesses report hearing emergency sirens blaring through the streets as authorities respond to the blackout.
‘There’s nothing. There’s no cash. No money. Nothing,’ said Jose Luis Orlandini, who was eating in downtown Santiago when the cut happened.
The Santiago metro, which transports millions of passengers, was closed and passengers were evacuated from stalled trains.
Buses remain the only way to travel across the country (Picture: Reuters)
Other footage from around the country showed passengers evacuating train stations by walking up switched-off escalators, while traffic signals were also shown to be not working.
There were also long queues for buses which were still running on the city’s roads.
Maria Angelica Roman, 45, told AFP news agency: ‘They let us leave work because of the power cut, but now I don’t know how we will get home because all the buses are full.’
Toha said that power should start coming back online in the ‘coming hours.’
‘We hope that what we’ve been told will happen, that in the next few hours we’ll have electrical service back,’ she said. ‘And if that’s not the case, we’ll have to take different measures.’
Antofagasta, a copper mining group, said it was operating its mines with a backup power generator.
The blackout left several passengers stuck on a roller coaster as the ride was about to descend down the tracks at Fantasilandia, an amusement park in Santiago.
The park’s management told CNN Chile that backup generators were deployed in order to restore service and remove the customers.
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