The Chilean authorities say that the greatest breakdown in the years caused by a failure of the transmission line.
The government of Chile has promulgated a state of emergency after a huge power outage left millions in the South American country without electricity and plunged the capital Santiago into the dark.
The widespread power of Tuesday, the largest in the country for years, has been caused by a failure of the high -voltage transmission line in northern Chile, said the Minister of the Interior Carolina Toha, excluding sabotage.
Speaking in a television speech at the end of the evening at the nation, the Chilean president Gabriel Boric said that eight million houses had been affected by the breakdown, which he attributed to private companies.
“What happened today is scandalous because it is not tolerable that an impact on the daily life of millions of Chileans, and that is why it is from the State To keep them responsible, “said Boric.
The National Service for the Response to Chile Disasters, Senapred, said that 14 of the country’s 16 regions were affected.
The Government of Chile established a curfew from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. on Wednesday (01:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. GMT) of the northern Port of Arica in the southern region of Los Lagos.
The Ministry of the Interior also declared that it deployed armed forces across the country – which extends over 4,300 km (more than 2,600 miles) along the South Pacific Coast – to maintain order .
At 10 p.m. (01:00 GMT), only about a quarter of the country’s electricity network was back online, said Juan Carlos Olmedo, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the National Electricity Coordinator of Chile (CEN) .
Olmedo added that power could be fully restored in the morning.
The executive director of CEN, Ernesto Huber, said that the body had “activated several power plants, mainly hydroelectric stations” to try to meet demand in the meantime.
Santiago’s lamps have become dark and the sirens took Tuesday, while the capital’s metro – which transports millions of passengers a day – was closed and the passengers were evacuated, reported the reuters news agency .
The Minister of Transport of Chile, Juan Carlos Munoz, urged people to stay at home because he warned that only about 27% of Santiago traffic lights operated.
“There is nothing. There is no money. No money. Nothing, ”Santiago resident Jose Luis Orlanni told Reuters.
The authorities of Arturo Merino Benitez International Airport in Santiago have said that terminals use emergency power and that flights work as normal.
There have been shocks on the world metal markets, because the breakdown has caused a job of large copper mines in northern Chile, which is the world’s largest producer of metal.
