JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
In Chile, a nationwide blackout plunged the country into total darkness Tuesday evening and sent electricity providers into a frantic scramble to restore power. John Bartlett reports.
JOHN BARTLETT, BYLINE: Just after 3 p.m. on Tuesday, Chile fell silent. In near-100-degree heat, computer screens went blank, traffic lights went out and the country ground to a halt. The area affected by the blackout stretched nearly 1,700 miles, from Arica, on the northern border with Peru, all the way down to Chiloe Island, the gateway to Patagonia.
In Santiago, the sweltering gridlock saw taxi drivers hike their rates as the Metro was evacuated and people pushed their way onto buses. In the north of the country, operations were halted in some copper mines, as the national electricity grid reported that more than 98% of Chile's 19 million population had been left without power.
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PRESIDENT GABRIEL BORIC: (Speaking Spanish).
BARTLETT: President Gabriel Boric blamed the outage on a transmission fault.
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BORIC: (Speaking Spanish).
BARTLETT: "Today has been a difficult day for millions of our countrymen," he said at a news conference on Tuesday night. His frustration was clear to see.
KARLA FUENTEALBA: (Speaking Spanish).
BARTLETT: Karla Fuentealba is an English teacher living in Santiago who was caught up in the downtown disruption. Her initial relief that an overrunning work call was cut short was soon replaced by alarm once she tried to make her way home.
FUENTEALBA: (Speaking Spanish).
BARTLETT: "What we saw was total chaos," she said. "People were trying to walk home en masse, and it was still very hot at that time. The buses were full and weren't stopping for people, and there weren't enough of them."
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BARTLETT: As night fell, the government reported that the health care system remained operational, but a constitutional state of emergency was declared. Soldiers were deployed to affected areas to enforce a curfew that was declared for 10 p.m., lasting until 6 o'clock this morning. Authorities said that over 200 people were arrested throughout the night for breaking the curfew.
In the eerie, inky blackness in Santiago, dogs barked, candles flickered in tower block windows and generators throbbed into life.
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BARTLETT: When the power came back on in parts of the city just after 11 p.m., howls of delight and applause rang through the streets. By Wednesday morning, about 220,000 people were still without power and 300,000 children had been given the day off school as the government battled to bring the whole country back online.
For NPR News, I'm John Bartlett in Santiago, Chile. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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