(Quito) Ecuador suffered a “nationwide” power outage of at least an hour on Wednesday afternoon due to network failures, causing scenes of chaos across the country.
“There is a failure in the network that has caused cascading disconnections, so there is no electricity throughout the country,” Energy Minister Roberto Luque said on the social network without giving any further explanation.
“We are focusing all our efforts on resolving the issue as quickly as possible,” he added.
The outage surprised Ecuadorians, including residents of the capital Quito and riders of its metro, around 3:20 p.m. local time (4:20 p.m. Eastern). Power gradually returned, from one neighborhood to another, an hour after the blackout, at least in Quito, a city of some three million inhabitants, AFP noted.
“The national blackout has affected the ENTIRE capital,” commented its mayor, Pabel Muñoz, on X. “The incident must be very important to have affected even the energy of the Quito metro, which uses an autonomous system,” he warned, saying he had ordered “the activation of all the response teams of the municipality of Quito to facilitate mobility, prevent accidents at the main intersections and manage public spaces.”
The metro was paralyzed, requiring the evacuation of thousands of passengers, sometimes on the tracks but apparently calmly, according to videos broadcast by the media.
Municipal officers were urgently deployed to road junctions, in the midst of chaos while traffic lights were out of service. The local press also spoke of “road chaos” at congested intersections.
The same road chaos was observed in the large port city of Guayaquil, on the Pacific coast, according to an AFP correspondent, reporting many people stuck in broken elevators in large office and residential buildings.
Still in Guayaquil, the company in charge of drinking water management called on the population to “take measures and stock up” on water, while waiting for a return to normal.
The tram in the southern city of Cuenca also stopped operating. In Quito, the internet was also temporarily cut, AFP noted, and the cell phone network intermittently disrupted, according to the press.
“Due to the nationwide power outage and in order to ensure the safety of the educational community, classes are suspended in all public and private educational establishments,” the Ministry of Education announced.
The extent of the outage is not yet known exactly, and Minister Luque was due to give a press conference late in the afternoon.
In April, Ecuador suffered scheduled power outages of up to 13 hours due to a prolonged drought, low hydroelectric reservoirs, and dilapidated infrastructure, authorities said. The cuts stopped in May with the return of the rains.
