Almost all of Chile was left without electricity after a massive power outage on Tuesday. 14 out of 16 regions and a total of 18 million people were affected.
Seven million of them live in the capital Santiago, where traffic lights stopped working, the subway stopped, and people had to be evacuated from their work.
A few hours after the interruption, when darkness began to fall, authorities announced emergency and introduced curfew in much of the country, Reuters reports.
“We will have a curfew from 22 o’clock in the evening to 06 in the morning,” said Chile’s Interior Minister Carolina Toha at a press conference.
Suspects no cyberattack
The Interior Minister stated that the extensive power outage has probably been caused by an error in the power grid in the northern part of the country.
The authorities do not suspect any sabotage or that a cyber attack would be behind the interruption.
There is no forecast yet when the current in the country can come back, but according to Chile’s National Electricity Coordinator (CEN) Ernesto Huber, some areas in the north and south had begun to get the power back on Tuesday evening.