MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Brazil says massive blackout was caused by a lightning storm

In spite of the official report, much of what happened remains in the dark

Brazilian officials stated the blackout that left at least 60 million of people in the dark in Brazil and neighbouring Paraguay Tuesday was caused by a lightning storm.

The Energy Ministry's executive secretary, Marcio Zimmermann, told reporters that the storm took out three transmission lines running from the Itaipu hydroelectric dam on the Brazil-Paraguay border.

Much of the southern half of Brazil, including the three largest cities, Sao Paulo, Belo Horizonte and Rio de Janeiro, were without power Tuesday night. All of Paraguay was blacked out for a brief period.

Officials say the Itaipu plant was shut down completely for several hours. The malfunction caused a loss of about 17,000 megawatts to the national electricity grid.

The blackout knocked out traffic signals and subway service, snarling traffic and forced evening commuters to abandon train cars. There were also reports of a spike in robberies on city streets.

But the director of the Brazilian Centre for Infrastructure Studies, Adriano Pires, says the problem is that Brazil has failed to maintain its power lines, saying a storm alone should not cause such a massive power outage.

The Itaipu hydroelectric plant which is the largest operational dam in the world returned to normal production early Wednesday. It was the first time all generators had to be shut down because the transmission lines were non operational.