Ecuador suffered a nationwide power outage on Wednesday, leaving about 18 million people in the dark for several hours, a senior government minister said.
The metro system in Quito was shut down and traffic lights stopped working around mid-afternoon local time on Wednesday.
Immediately after power was restored, Public Works Secretary Roberto Luque blamed the outage on a lack of investment in the electrical system.
Writing on X, he said it was “just further evidence of the energy crisis we are dealing with”.
“For years, we stopped investing in these systems and today we are suffering the consequences,” he added.
In April, Drought forced the government to announce a series of power cut plans leaving major cities without electricity for many hours.
Quito Mayor Pabel Muñoz described Wednesday’s incident as “massive,” explaining: “it even caused a power outage for the metro, which has its own system.”
The Quito metro system said services were interrupted “due to a general failure of the national interconnected electric power system”.
The power outage caused discontent among residents, with hairdresser Diana Rosales – who was cutting someone’s hair when the power went out – telling Expresso newspaper: “It’s not fair that we continue to have bad service when the power goes out.” have to pay a lot of bills.”
Local media reported that drinking water supplies had been suspended in some areas, with some residents expressing frustration at the lack of warning about the suspension.
“Now I have to make magic with the bottle I have at home,” Andrew Medina, a resident of Guayas, told Expresso.
The Ministry of Education said night classes were also suspended at educational institutions across the country and switched to online learning.
A few hours after the power outage, Mr. Luque announced that 95% of the country’s electricity had been restored.
Previously, he blamed the power outage on broken transmission lines.
Most of the country’s energy comes from neighboring Colombia.
