In the blink of an eye, half of Argentina blinked, darkened and came to a standstill.
After four in the afternoon, when the heat continued unabated, the
Clarín
newsroom had three brief power cuts that heralded something striking:
"Atucha I fell
," was the reiterated comment reported on social networks.
A fire in some pastures in General Rodríguez, in the western suburbs, affected a 500 Kv high-voltage power line that connects that area with Campana.
Thus began the
biggest blackout in the last four years
, since almost 5% of the electricity supply went out of the system, on a day of extremely high demand due to the sweltering heat.
The thermometer in the Federal Capital marked 36°.
Almost simultaneously,
another line was disconnected that mainly affected Greater Buenos Aires
and another area of the province of Buenos Aires.
After 4:30 p.m., the connection that goes from Mendoza to the Diamante River also fell and collapsed, leaving the
Cuyo region
in the dark.
Like
a tetris, different regions of the country were joining the blackout.
Córdoba, Santa Fe and part of the Northwest region were no exception.
Neither did Patagonia, which around 5:00 p.m. saw how Santa Cruz darkened.
At that time,
40 percent of Argentina was without light.
The blackout on Wednesday, in which President Alberto Fernández opened the regular session in Congress, recalled that "
blackout
" of Father's Day in 2019. That day there were
20 million people without electricity, interruption of transportation services, lack of water
and chaos of proportions, which began to reverse around eight at night.
Around 6:00 p.m., Atucha was reconnected and very slowly the service began to return to the City of Buenos Aires and the GBA.
"If there were no new failures, the service would return at 8:00 p.m.," ventured Santiago Yanotti, Undersecretary of Electric Power.
In turn, the electricity company CAMMESA reported "a collapse in energy demand after 4:00 p.m., which forced the
suspension of activity at the nuclear power plant
."
The National Government maintained that the causes of the fire in General Rodríguez will be investigated, while the Argentine Nucleoelectric company clarified "that the massive interruption of electricity supply was not caused
by the Atucha I Nuclear Power Plant, but by failures in the interconnected system."
.
Who went off duty "to be sure."
To all this, at 5:35 p.m., when the situation of anxiety was absolute, Alberto Fernández posted fragments of his speech and in his last tweet he included the phrase: "Argentina is a great country", right in the
middle
of the massive blackout that had the population in suspense.
interrupted services
Immediately after the power cut, the different benefits began to fall like dominoes.
First it was the drinking water company
Aysa
that tweeted: "We remember that the company's drinking water production and distribution systems are electrically dependent, so they can be harmed."
And after a while he revalidated: "The drinking water distribution system is without power."
The blackout came just as a large number of AMBA workers were heading home and found that there were no subways or trains, as happened at the
Constitución
station , where thousands of
Roca
passengers lived through hours of uncertainty.
While the
Sarmiento, the Mitre, the San Martín and the Belgrano Sur
registered long delays, with passengers on the trains and the platforms full, most of the subway lines reflected the same inconvenience, with the exception of line H, which directly did not it worked.
On two subway lines, lines H and line E, two operations had to be carried out
to evacuate passengers from the trains
that took place at the stations, but there were no incidents.
"The H was something fast, luckily, it happened between the Las Heras and Santa Fe stations."
The other episode "was almost touching the station, so it was not necessary to evacuate on the tracks."
In other corners of the City of Buenos Aires, firefighters had to help
people who were trapped in 18 elevators simultaneously
.
Finally they were able to be rescued.
On the other hand, Civil Defense prioritized electrodependent people to provide them with assistance.
From Aeropuertos Argentina 2000 they indicated that "there were no problems during the day.
The airlines worked normally
, since the generators worked... There are provinces with which we could not establish contact, but we insist that
all the country's airports have generating sets
that avoid any power outage".
Although there were delays.
"But nothing significant, nor were they due to power outages. Ezeiza continues to operate without problems, while the ANAC (National Civil Aviation Administration)
decided to space flights every 5 minutes in Aeroparque
, without generating any major news
Of almost 4,000 signalized crossings in the City in total, around 100 were out of service due to lack of voltage, the majority in the northern part of the city.
The most committed were reinforced with traffic agents.
Only the ecobici stations cut their sleeves to the blackout, since they all operated normally.
Around 9:00 p.m., Subterráneos de Buenos Aires (SBASE) confirmed that "the 6 lines and the Premetro were
restoring their service normally."
In the
middle of all the eggplant, AySA once again asked the population to make
rational use of drinking water
.
MG
look too
Massive power outage: users express themselves through social networks with anger and memes
Massive power outage: the resignation of thousands of passengers stranded in Constitución on a sweltering hot day
