MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Huge two hours long blackout causes chaos in Buenos Aires

Metropolitan Buenos Aires suffered on Thursday evening a huge two hours blackout which caused chaos at rush hour in a city already under strain because of strikes in the underground and several train lines.

The origin of the blackout that begun at 19:00 hours was fire which broke out in a substation near Ezeiza airport leaving most of central Buenos Aires with no energy and no traffic lights. It was later reported that the lack of electricity services also extended to adjoining areas in metropolitan Buenos Aires, which means several million "porteños" were in the dark for almost two hours. Following the incident the companies responsible reported they were assessing the impact of the blackout and insisted that an "immediate restitution" of services mechanism was in place when the accident occurred. The Fire Department said that six full teams were involved in fighting the twenty meters high flames at the substation which forced the elimination of a whole line of transformers. The incident is particularly nerve racking for President Nestor Kirchner administration's since earlier this week furious commuters set one of Buenos Aires main stations and several trains on fire in protest for constant delays and cancelling of services. This situation strained the rest of the city's transport system and the underground unions took advantage to demand better working conditions leaving a million people stranded. The overall energy situation in Argentina faces a delicate situation because of frozen public utilities rates and lack of necessary investment by private companies. The Kirchner administration has been taking advantage of the situation not only politically, but also to gradually recover for the state or private Argentine investors, many of the public utilities that were privatized in the "corrupt" nineties "at rock bottom prices".