(Quito) Ecuador suffered a “nationwide” power outage of at least an hour on Wednesday afternoon due to network failures, causing scenes of chaos across the country.
“There is a failure in the network which has caused cascading disconnections, so there is no electricity throughout the country”, indicated the Minister of Energy, Roberto Luque on the social network without giving any further explanation.
“We are focusing all our efforts to resolve the problem as quickly as possible,” he added.
The outage surprised Ecuadorians, especially residents of the capital Quito and commuters of its metro, around 3:20 p.m. local time (4:20 p.m. Eastern). Power returned gradually, from one neighborhood to another, an hour after the blackout, at least in Quito, a city of some three million inhabitants, AFP noted.
“The national shutdown affected the WHOLE capital,” commented its mayor on X, Pabel Muñoz. “The incident must be very important for it to have affected even the energy of the Quito metro, which uses an autonomous system,” he was alarmed, saying he had ordered “the activation of all the teams of reaction of the Municipality of Quito to facilitate mobility, prevent accidents at main intersections and manage public spaces”.
The metro was paralyzed, requiring the evacuation of thousands of passengers, sometimes on the tracks but apparently calmly, according to videos broadcast by the media.
Drinking water cuts
Municipal officers were urgently deployed to road junctions, in the midst of chaos while traffic lights were out of service. The local press also spoke of “road chaos” at congested intersections.
The same road chaos was observed in the large port city of Guayaquil, on the Pacific coast, according to an AFP correspondent, reporting many people stuck in broken elevators in large office and residential buildings.
Still in Guayaquil, the company in charge of drinking water management called on the population to “take measures and stock up” on water, while waiting for a return to normal.
The tram in the southern city of Cuenca also stopped operating. In Quito, the internet was also temporarily cut, AFP noted, and the cell phone network intermittently disrupted, according to the press.
“Due to the national power outage and in order to ensure the safety of the educational community, classes are suspended in all educational establishments” public and private, announced the Ministry of Education.
The extent of the outage is not yet known with precision, and Minister Luque was due to give a press conference late in the afternoon.
In April, Ecuador suffered planned power outages of up to 13 hours due to a prolonged drought, hydroelectric reservoirs at their minimum, and dilapidated infrastructure, according to authorities. The cuts stopped in May with the return of the rains.