Become a fan of Slashdot on Facebook

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
Government Power

Massive Electrical Failure Cuts Power To Nearly All Of Argentina On Election Day -- and Uruguay (bbc.com) 84

A reader quotes the BBC: A massive electrical failure has left almost all of Argentina and Uruguay without power, according to a major Argentine electricity provider. Authorities say the cause of the blackout is still unclear. Argentine media said the power cut occurred shortly after 07:00 [03:00 PST, 11:00 BST], causing trains to be halted and failures with traffic signalling.

It came as people in parts of Argentina were preparing to go to the polls for local elections.

"A massive failure in the electrical interconnection system left all of Argentina and Uruguay without power," electricity supply company Edesur said in a tweet. Alejandra Martinez, a spokeswoman for the company, described the power cut as unprecedented. "This is the first time something like this has happened across the entire country." Argentina's energy secretary, Gustavo Lopetegui, said the cause of the power failure had not yet been determined. The Ministry of Civil Protection estimated that parts of the service could be restored in about seven or eight hours.

Edesur said that power had been restored over 75,00 clients in parts of Buenos Aires and local media reported that two airports were operating on generators in the capital. Uruguay's energy company, UTE, said in a series of tweets that power had been restored to coastal areas and to areas north of Rio Negro.

The combined population of Argentina and Uruguay is about 48 million people.... Tierra del Fuego in the far south is the only area that remains unaffected because it is not connected to the power grid.

"Local media have been showing voters casting their ballots in the dark, with mobile phones being used as lanterns."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Massive Electrical Failure Cuts Power To Nearly All Of Argentina On Election Day -- and Uruguay

Comments Filter:
  • Gee I hope that's not one of these attacks which went astray
    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/0... [nytimes.com]

    • More likely to be squirrels. Is this particular election even notable, or is it just Jack Johnson vs. John Jackson?

  • Sounds too familiar (Score:5, Interesting)

    by stikves ( 127823 ) on Sunday June 16, 2019 @10:47AM (#58771622) Homepage

    We had a similar set of outages in Turkish elections, and their blame was put on cats entering transformers:
    https://www.huffpost.com/entry... [huffpost.com]

    These kind of election irregularity patterns seem to be becoming a norm. That is really unfortunate.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      When outages of some sort happen each and every day, of course there will be overlap with other events. Anyone who studied computer science im college (which admittedly is probably very few people here these days) will know that this is just an example of the Pigeonhole Principle.

    • by gtall ( 79522 ) on Sunday June 16, 2019 @02:46PM (#58772554)

      Not to worry, Erdogan had lots of feral cats rounded up and accused of stealing state secrets and fomenting reactionary ideas like freedom. We won't be seeing those cats out of prison for awhile. Erdogan is nothing if not thorough. Actually, he's almost but not quite above slime mould on the evolutionary scale of competency.

      Hey Erdogan, if you don't completely tank Turkey's economy this year, remember there is always next year. Go get'em tiger!!

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Sunday June 16, 2019 @10:49AM (#58771630)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • FTFS:

      Argentina's energy secretary, Gustavo Lopetegui, said the cause of the power failure had not yet been determined. The Ministry of Civil Protection estimated that parts of the service could be restored in about seven or eight hours.

      If they don't know the cause, how can they know when it will be fixed . . . ?

      • I think they are basing that time on how long it would take to restart the system from a "cold boot" state. As the different parts of the grid are brought back online in such a way that if the cause of the original failure is still present they could identify the part of the grid it is in and isolate it so they can restart the rest of the grid within the original estimate. It might have been something as simple as a cheap relay failing. like the event that blacked out part of the East coast if the USA in
        • by hjf ( 703092 )

          They applied "Protocol 7": PT N 7 - Recuperación de Colapso Total del SADI.

          For the first time ever.

  • This is what happens when you're a sanctuary [wikipedia.org] for Nazis escaping after World War II. That's why you can't have nice things, like electricity and free/fair elections -- 73 years later. :-)

    • This is what happens when you're a sanctuary [wikipedia.org] for Nazis escaping after World War II. That's why you can't have nice things, like electricity and free/fair elections -- 73 years later. :-)

      I dunno . . . for the US, it worked out very well. We got a rocket that sent us to the moon.

      "The Russians put our camera made by our German scientists and your film made by your German scientists into their satellite made by their German scientists." -- Ice Station Zebra

  • Hmmmmm (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Archtech ( 159117 )

    Turkey... Venezuela... Russia... now Argentina.

    "Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it's enemy action".

    Thank goodness Uncle Sam would never dream of interfering in the internal political affairs (or elections) of any other nation.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/wor... [bbc.co.uk]
    https://gazettereview.com/2019... [gazettereview.com]
    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/0... [nytimes.com]

    • Since it's also happened in the USA (tree limb hit a line in Ohio), who are you proposing is doing all this....or are you just full on conspiracy theories? (I heard that Trump his orangeness personally shot up a transformer just outside Buenos Aires...)
      • Aren't you reading the news? Apparently it was THE RUSSIANS who brought down the grid in the USA. I know because of all the authoritative sources that tell me so.

        It's hardly possible they could be mistaken. But I know they aren't, because they would have published retractions and apologies by now.

        Russian Hackers Attacking U.S. Power Grid and Aviation, FBI Warns (Bloomberg)
        https://www.bloomberg.com/news... [bloomberg.com]

        Russia Hacked U.S. Power Grid — So What Will The Trump Administration Do About It? (NPR)
        https://ww [npr.org]

    • by Livius ( 318358 )

      The US overthrew the government of Iraq, and is actively trying to provoke war/regime change in Iran and Venezuela.

      And the US has incestuous relationships with Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.

      That's all the founding members of OPEC. Coincidence?

  • by Anonymous Coward

    that this coincides with another article today on Slashdot:

    America Planted Malware In Russia's Power Grid, Says NYT [slashdot.org]

  • Wonder if this was a test for November 2020 here. A power outage over several swing states with electronic voting could render the election invalid, Trump declares the vote invalid, calls for another "national emergency" and maintains power until the courts figure what to do next because this never happened before. This could take years to sort out.
  • Cutting electricity on election/voting day - they do this in the Philippines too. Not the whole country, but whole provinces. It just 'happens'.
  • I am really surprised that it does not get more media coverage in the west.

    Who is behind this ? is the the US ? The Russians ? Or China ? It is likely a state sponsored entity, and western media are afraid to scare their population. The US or EU would end up with civilian unrest, possible war if it happened here.
    We are so dependent on electricity. And young people without google and the Internet would know nothing about anything, neither have any friends any more.

  • by Only Time Will Tell ( 5213883 ) on Monday June 17, 2019 @09:49AM (#58775440)
    If I were to put on my tinfoil hat, I'd say that there is a strong possibility of this being caused by a foreign power, in perhaps a practice run ahead of attacks on first world nations' elections (say, USA 2020?).
  • ....one hell of a campaign speech.

"The vast majority of successful major crimes against property are perpetrated by individuals abusing positions of trust." -- Lawrence Dalzell

Working...