A massive power outage affected millions of Argentines in several provinces and parts of Buenos Aires for at least two hours on Wednesday followingnoon, in connection with a fire near high voltage lines, amid a heat wave , authorities said.
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The media reported the first cuts between 4:00 p.m. and 5:00 p.m. (local time), with traffic lights out of order, neighborhoods in Buenos Aires without electricity and several metro stations plunged into darkness, as noted by AFP journalists.
“The outage is significant, it affects several provinces. In times of high heat like today in a large part of the country, the electricity sector was called upon to the tune of 25,000 megawatts and the cut removed some 9,000 megawatts, “said the under-secretary of the Energy Santiago Yanotti on the C5N channel.
The origin of the cut would be a fire which broke out in a field 60 km from Buenos Aires, near high voltage lines, connected to the nearby Atucha 1 nuclear power plant, according to Mr. Yanotti.
“Due to this external problem, Atucha 1 went out of service, in safety shutdown mode,” said Nucleoelectrica, the national nuclear electricity agency. This in turn affected the supply of large areas of the country.
No official figures were initially available on the number of households affected, but central and northwestern provinces, such as Cordoba, Santa Fe, Mendoza, and parts of the province of Buenos Aires, were affected, told AFP a government source.
The airports of Ezeiza and Aeroparque in Buenos Aires experienced “microcuts”, without seeing their service interrupted, according to this source.
In the capital, the light was restored around 6:00 p.m. in the metro and services gradually resumed.
“The network is recovering little by little and we hope that the electrical service will be restored in a few hours,” assured Mr. Yanotti.
The incident comes once morest the backdrop of the ninth heat wave this summer in Argentina, like the 36 degrees on Wednesday in Buenos Aires. The capital is experiencing the hottest summer in its history according to the meteorological service.
