Ecuador suffered a general power outage for at least an hour on Wednesday afternoon. national scale » due to network failures, said Energy Minister Roberto Luque.
2 mins
“ There is a fault in the network which has caused cascading disconnections, so there is no electricity throughout the country », indicated Roberto Luque on the social network X, without giving further explanations.
The outage surprised Ecuadorians, particularly residents of the capital Quito and users of its metro, around 3:20 p.m. local time (8:20 p.m. UT). Power returned gradually, from one neighborhood to another, an hour after the blackout, at least in Quito, a city of some three million inhabitants, AFP noted. “ The incident must be very important for it to have affected even the energy of the Quito metro, which uses an autonomous system », Commented on X the mayor of the capital, Pabel Muñoz.
Road chaos in the streets of big cities
The metro was paralyzed, requiring the evacuation of thousands of passengers. Municipal officers were urgently deployed to road junctions, in the midst of chaos while traffic lights were out of service.
The same road chaos was observed in the large port city of Guayaquil, on the Pacific coast, according to an AFP correspondent, reporting many people stuck in broken elevators in large office and residential buildings.
Still in Guayaquil, the company in charge of drinking water management called on the population to “ take action and make reservations » of water, while waiting for a return to normal.
The tram in the southern city of Cuenca also stopped operating. In Quito, the internet was also temporarily cut, AFP noted, and the cell phone network intermittently disrupted, according to the press.
“ Due to the national power outage and in order to ensure the safety of the educational community, classes are suspended in all educational establishments » public and private, announced the Ministry of Education.
The extent of the outage is not yet known with precision, and Minister Luque was due to give a press conference late in the afternoon.
In April, theEcuador had suffered scheduled power outages of up to 13 hours due to a prolonged drought, hydroelectric reservoirs at their minimum, and dilapidated infrastructure, according to authorities. The cuts stopped in May with the return of the rains.