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Source: Reuters -
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A major electricity outage left tens of millions of people in Brazil's two largest cities of Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro without power on Wednesday due to problems at the massive Itaipu dam that straddles its border with Paraguay.
The blackout affected at least six of Brazil's 26 states,
hitting the industrialised southeastern part of the country
especially hard. All of Paraguay, which gets most of its energy
from the dam, was also briefly left in the dark.
Three hours after the blackout, power was beginning to be restored
in some parts of Sao Paulo, Brazil's financial capital and South
America's largest city. But most of the sprawling metropolis
remained in the dark.
"The exact cause still isn't known, but we suspect that atmospheric
problems, an intense storm, may have contributed to or caused the
transmission lines to Itaipu to shut down," Brazil's energy
minister, Edison Lobao, told reporters in Brasilia, the
capital.
Jorge Samek, the Brazilian director of Itaipu, the world's
second-largest hydroelectric plant, told CBN Radio that the entire
dam went down.
Officials said they hoped power would be fully restored in the
coming hours.
The Itaipu power plant provides about 20% of the electricity
supply in Brazil, Latin America's largest economy, but more than
90% of Paraguay's.
In Paraguay, the power cut blacked out the whole country for up to
15 minutes but electricity was soon restored, an Asuncion resident
said.
Traffic chaos
Traffic on the streets of Sao Paulo descended into chaos shortly
after the power outage. Thousands of passengers were forced to exit
stalled subway trains and walk along the tracks to get back to
stations and make their way to the surface.
Rio de Janeiro, a tourist hub famous for its beaches and Carnival,
is due to host the World Cup soccer championship in 2014 and the
Olympic Games in 2016.
At Rio's international airport, flights continued to take off and
land but many passengers faced delays because taxi drivers were
afraid of driving in the dark in crime-ridden areas.
No flight delays or cancellations were reported at Sao Paulo's
international airport, which was operating on emergency
generators.
CBN Radio reported that Rio's state governor, Sergio Cabral, had
ordered extra police onto the streets to try to keep them safe in
the dark.
Other Brazilian cities that suffered power outages included Belo
Horizonte in the state of Minas Gerais and Campinas, a large city
about an hour outside of Sao Paulo.
Brazil's national electricity grid operator said 17,000 megawatts
of energy had been lost, equivalent to the entire consumption of
Sao Paulo state.
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