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MercoPress, en Español

Montevideo, May 14th 2025 - 17:38 UTC

Tag: blackout

  • Wednesday, April 30th 2025 - 10:48 UTC

    Four people die in Spain amid mass blackout

    All four cases were linked to people with pulmonary conditions and the use of respirators

    At least four people were reported to have died as a consequence of the mass power outage that hit Spain Monday. In Ourense (Galicia), an elderly couple (81 and 77) and their son (56) died from carbon monoxide poisoning after using a generator to power a respirator during the blackout. In Alzira, a 46-year-old woman with a pulmonary condition died when her artificial respirator lost power. The outage, described as historic by Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, disrupted trains, elevators, traffic lights, and telecommunications. The cause of the blackout remains unknown.

  • Saturday, March 15th 2025 - 10:31 UTC

    Cuba going through fourth nationwide blackout in six months

    Partial remedies never solved Cuba's underlying energy problems

    Cuba has experienced its fourth nationwide blackout in six months, leaving nearly 10 million people without electricity following a failure at a key substation in Havana, which caused a chain reaction that led to the shutdown of multiple power generation units, resulting in a total collapse of the National Electric System (SEN). The new crisis is said to be the consequence of persistent underfunding, outdated infrastructure, and fuel shortages.

  • Wednesday, December 23rd 2020 - 09:44 UTC

    Huge blackout affects Buenos Aires City for several hours

    Power company Edesur said about one million people in the south-central area of the city were affected. The outage was traced back to a fire at a substation

    A huge power cut in the Argentine capital Buenos Aires caused a blackout to hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses on Tuesday and brought metro lines to a standstill. The blackout also occurred when the country's medicine and pharmaceutical regulator extended an emergency authorization to the Pfizer BioTechN vaccine.

  • Saturday, November 7th 2020 - 08:40 UTC

    Four days blackout in Brazilian Amapa state: full service restoration in ten days

    Nearly 90% of Amapa’s population was still without power on Friday morning, according to the state’s communications secretary

    A fire at an electricity substation has caused four days of blackouts in most of northern Brazil’s Amapa state, disrupting the lives of hundreds of thousands of people.

  • Thursday, July 25th 2019 - 09:20 UTC

    Maduro blames “desperate” US for the latest blackout that plunged most of Venezuela in the dark

    At the opening of military exercises that will last until the end of next month, Maduro said the blackout was caused by a “high-tech electromagnetic attack.”

    Venezuela President Nicolas Maduro on Wednesday blamed the “desperate” United States for a major power cut that affected large parts of the crisis-wracked country on Monday.

  • Wednesday, July 24th 2019 - 09:59 UTC

    “Electromagnetic attack” behind massive power cut, Venezuelan minister explains

    The attack “sought to affect the country's hydroelectric generation system,” said Rodríguez.

    Venezuela's Communication and Information Minister Jorge Rodriguez Tuesday revealed that according to preliminary inquiries, the probable cause of the massive blackout on Monday, which hit most parts of Venezuela, including the capital Caracas, was “an electromagnetic attack.”

  • Tuesday, July 23rd 2019 - 09:51 UTC

    Caracas and other regions of Venezuela hit by a massive power blackout

    
The state-owned power company CORPOELEC only reported a breakdown affecting sectors of Caracas.

    Caracas and other parts of crisis-wracked Venezuela were hit by a massive power cut on Monday foreign journalists and internet users said. The lights went out in most of Caracas at 4.41pm (2041 GMT) while people in other parts of the country took to social media to report the power had gone out there too.

  • Thursday, July 18th 2019 - 12:51 UTC

    Power cuts in Cuba not due to shortage of oil, minister says

    Some electricity-generating units were “in planned maintenance,” said Energy Minister Raúl García Barreiro.

    The Cuban government Wednesday explained the repeated blackouts in the country but are due to breakdowns in the electricity-producing machinery and not because of a shortage of oil that can be attributed to sanctions by the United States.

  • Monday, July 15th 2019 - 03:43 UTC

    Power cut hits NYC for almost four hours

    Saturday's blackout has happened on the same date as the great blackout of 1977

    Less than a month after a similar episode although at a larger scale happened in almost the entire southern cone, a power cut hit New York for about four hours Saturday, affecting some 72,000 customers, in the city's western area and landmarks such as Times Square, causing havoc and unrest when metro lines and theatres came to a standstill.

  • Friday, June 7th 2019 - 08:40 UTC

    Maduro names new electricity minister as sporadic blackouts continue

    Brito replaces Igor Gavidia whom Maduro appointed only on Apr 1, tasked with the getting the country back on its feet after a series of crippling blackouts.

    Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro named a new electricity minister on Thursday, replacing one he appointed just two months ago amid persistent prolonged power blackouts.

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