Chile was plunged into chaos on Tuesday as a massive blackout cut power to eight million households, affecting most of the country. The government imposed a curfew from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. in the affected regions and closed schools on Wednesday, leaving around 300,000 students affected.
The outage, which affected a 600-mile area from the northernmost city of Arica to the southern city of Los Lagos, caused chaos on the streets of Santiago. Traffic lights went out, stranding people in elevators and shutting down the subway network. People were left scrambling for buses and walking long distances to get home.
President Gabriel Boric called the day a difficult one for millions of Chileans, criticizing power companies for allowing the outage to occur and for delays in restoring power. By late Tuesday, power had been restored to about four million households, but the recovery was slow and unstable.
Soldiers and national police officers were deployed to the affected regions, and helicopters circled Santiago to monitor the situation. Emergency services, hospitals, prisons, and airports operated on backup electricity systems and generators.
The outage was caused by a failure in the transmission system, officials said. Despite efforts to restore power, the situation remained precarious, leaving Chileans facing uncertainty and frustration. The government vowed to investigate the outage and hold power companies accountable for the chaos.
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