'Massive failure' leaves Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay with no power, utility says - CNN

Parts of Chile and southern Brazil are experiencing outages as well, said Edesur, the Buenos Aires-based company.

The company later posted an updated statement removing Uruguay and Paraguay from the list of countries that were entirely without electricity, but it isn't clear how many residents in those two countries have had their power restored. Power was only partially restored in Uruguay, the country's energy authority said.

In a statement on its website, Edesur said a "collapse" in its system occurred around 7 a.m. (6 a.m. ET).

Edesur is prioritizing any customer who depends on electricity for health reasons, it said, but because the power outage is so serious, anyone experiencing problems should go to a medical center.

A tweet posted just before 10 a.m. (9 a.m. ET) said the company had begun generating electricity in Buenos Aires and the surrounding area. It said restoring power in greater Buenos Aires would take several hours.

Lucas Rodriguez tweeted a video of the Argentine capital in darkness before dawn, saying he'd never seen anything like it.

"The funny part is that we don't have electricity, but we have internet in our phones," he told CNN.

Edesur had restored service to about 450,000 customers by noon, the company said.

Power was also restored to parts of western Uruguay that border Argentina, and to some regions in the south, including Montevideo, said National Administration of Power Plants and Electrical Transmissions, the country's energy authority.

The cause of the failure is under investigation, said Edesur, which has launched an "emergency operational plan" to deal with the situation.

The Argentine Interconnection System, which experienced the failure, handles the bulk of Argentina's electricity. It is one of two such systems in the country, the other being in the Patagonia region.

The utility won't be able to fully restore power to the region until the interconnection system is running normally again, which could take all day, it said.

The three countries experiencing total blackouts are home to a collective 55 million people.

CNN's Amanda Jackson and Tatiana Arias and CNN en Espanol's Esteban Campanella and Daniel Silva Fernandez contributed to this report.

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https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/16/world/power-outage-argentina-uruguay-paraguay/index.html

2019-06-16 15:33:00Z
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