‘Unprecedented’ blackout hits 48 million in three South American countries. Was it a cyberattack?
- Electricity services have been restored to Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay following a massive power cut
- Argentinian voters forced to use phone screens to light up ballots for gubernatorial elections
As lights turned back on across Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay after a massive blackout that hit tens of millions people, authorities were still largely in the dark about what caused the collapse of the interconnected grid and were tallying the damage from the disaster.
Argentine President Mauricio Macri promised a thorough investigation into what he called an “unprecedented” outage, one that raised questions about flaws in South America’s grid, which connects many of the region’s largest countries.
Energy officials said the results of the investigation would be available in 10 to 15 days, and they could not immediately provide details on the economic impact of the blackout.
Argentine Energy Secretary Gustavo Lopetegui said the power cut began with a failure in the country’s “interconnection system”, adding that it happens in other countries as well. But he said a chain of events took place later, causing total disruption.
“This is an extraordinary event that should have never happened,” he told a news conference. “It’s very serious. We can’t leave the whole country all of a sudden without electricity.”
