Electricity returns to most of Chile after a sweeping blackout, but questions remain

SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) — Power was restored to most of Chile’s 19 million people Wednesday after the country’s most disruptive blackout in 15 years, the government said, as authorities lifted a strict curfew imposed when the outage left 98% of the population without electricity.

Chilean Interior Minister Carolina Tohá said electricity had largely returned to Chile’s 14 afflicted regions, although 220,000 residents remained without power on Wednesday.

Restoring power proved to be more problematic in the country’s north, where a fault in a backbone transmission line first triggered the outage that set off a chain reaction of power plant and transmission line shut-downs across the South American nation.

Exactly how that happened remains under investigation.

Tohá told reporters that authorities were also investigating the circumstances under which three people died during Tuesday’s blackout, saying they had been “dependent on electricity,” without offering further details.

She appeared to be referring to residents who face dangers during power cuts because they rely on medical devices like ventilators for breathing assistance.

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As trains and the subway service started back up again in the country’s capital of Santiago, the government said it would not extend the state of emergency that expired early Wednesday. More than 200 people were arrested the night before for violating the nighttime curfew, authorities reported.

In some parts of the country, such as the town of Maipú south of Santiago, thousands of people waited anxiously for power — and drinking water — to return to their homes.

And some commuters on Wednesday still struggled to navigate city streets without functioning traffic lights. Tohá said more security forces would be deployed on city streets to help ward off traffic chaos.

The state-owned copper company Codelco, the world’s largest copper producer, and two other major companies said they were resuming operations at their mines as the power supply returned Wednesday. Chile produces roughly a quarter of the world’s copper.

The blackout was the most significant to hit Chile since 2010, when a destructive 8.8-magnitude earthquake and tsunami cut off power and knocked out communications for most of the country.

Leftist President Gabriel Boric late Tuesday reacted with outrage, pointing his finger at energy transmission companies and vowing that authorities would investigate the firms involved. The faulty transmission line was installed by energy transmission company ISA InterChile, he said.

“It is not tolerable that the daily lives of millions of Chileans are affected by the responsibility of one or several companies,” Boric said in his nationally televised address. “It’s the state’s duty to hold them responsible.”

Experts warned that the blackout highlighted pressing electricity generation problems in the business-friendly country that could dent investor confidence.

“For any foreign company that was thinking about bringing resources to Chile, it generates a ‘yellow flag,’” Bernardo Castro, risk management specialist from Universidad Finis Terrae in Chile, said of the blackout.

Castro also said he found it concerning that no one had foreseen a failure of this scale and that there were no backup mechanisms to prevent the nation’s entire electric grid from shutting down.

Critics encourage the state to take a more active role in planning electric infrastructure in Chile, where private companies have operated electricity — and other key services — since the (1973-1990) military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.

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Batschke reported from Sao Paulo.