Argentina: Massive power outage affects millions of homes amid heat wave

Argentinians wait at the Constitucion train station in Buenos Aires on March 1, 2023, during a massive power outage.

© Luis Robayo / AFP

Text by: RFI Follow

1 min

In Argentina, millions of people were without electricity for at least two hours on Wednesday March 1.

While the country is currently going through an intense heat wave, nearly half of Argentina's territory has been affected by a massive power cut.

At the origin of this outage, a fire in the province of Buenos Aires which affected central and northwestern provinces, such as Cordoba, Santa Fe, Mendoza, and certain sectors of the province of Buenos Aires.

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With our correspondent in Buenos Aires,

Théo Conscience

It was just after 4 p.m. Wednesday in Buenos Aires when traffic lights stopped working, causing chaos in the streets of the Argentine capital.

Entire neighborhoods are deprived of electricity, and we soon learn that the power cut actually concerns at least 11 of the 24 provinces of the country, that is to say almost half of the Argentine territory.

No official record

If no official report had been communicated in the evening, the local media put forward the figure of 20 million people affected for several hours.

According to Argentina's Undersecretary for Energy, the origin of this outage was a

fire

near high voltage lines, which would have caused a series of cascading incidents on the national electricity grid.

These ruptures would then have led to the automatic shutdown of the Atucha nuclear power plant as a safety measure.

Intentional fire

In the evening, as the situation was gradually normalizing throughout the country, the Minister of Economy Sergio Massa expressed his " 

certainty

 " as to the intentional nature of the fire, and asked the courts " 

to investigate and prosecute

 ” those responsible. 

Giant power outage in Argentina 🇦🇷 linked to a fire near high voltage lines.

In Buenos Aires agents replace traffic lights pic.twitter.com/gEhA0GNyGU

— Flora Genoux (@floragenoux) March 1, 2023

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