A power transmission line failure on Wednesday caused an unexpected blackout Ecuadorthe government said, days after announcing that there would be blackouts in the country due to production problems.
Ecuador's Energy Minister Roberto Luque said in a message posted on X, formerly Twitter, that the failure was reported by the country's National Electricity Operator and caused “a cascading disconnection” , which left the nation without energy service for several hours.
By Wednesday evening, electricity had been restored to 95 percent of the country, Luque wrote in an update to X, calling the blackout “a true reflection of the energy crisis” facing Ecuador. “We stopped investing in these systems years ago and today we are suffering the consequences,” he added.
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In some parts of the country, the outage lasted 20 minutes, but media and social media users reported that the problem continued for much longer in most cities.
Emilia Cevallos, a waitress at a restaurant in the north of the capital, Quito, said the blackout was surprising.
“We thought it was just in this sector, but when we left we realized that while some shops had generators connected, most had no electricity,” he said. “The traffic lights weren't working either.”
The municipality of Quito told X that traffic officers were mobilized to coordinate the flow of traffic. Quito Metro, the company that operates the city's subway system, said service was suspended as a result of the power failure.
Since last year, Ecuador has been facing an electricity generation crisis that has led to rationing throughout the country. In April, President Daniel Noboa's government began rationing electricity in the country's major cities as a drought linked to the El Niño weather pattern depleted reservoirs and limited production at hydroelectric plants which produce around 75% of the country's energy.
