OAN Staff James Meyers
3:37 PM – Tuesday, February 25, 2025
A giant power outage in Chile has left at least 19 million residents without electricity on Tuesday, forcing Chileans to be impacted by the darkness.
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The reported affected areas were “the northern Arica and Parinacota region to the southern Los Lagos region,” according to Chile’s national disaster prevention and response service SENAPRED.
No emergency situations have been reported as of February 25th, 2025, at 3:30 p.m. PST.
The power outage took place at 3:15 p.m. local time in multiple parts of the country.
Interior Minister Carolina Tohá announced that hospitals, prisons, and government buildings have been switching on backup generators in order to keep essential equipment operating.
According to the National Electrical Coordinator, the agency in charge of Chile’s power grid, the outage was caused by a disconnection in the transmission system in the Norte Chico region.
The enormous outage left more than 90% of the population without power, according to Interior Minister, Carolina Tohá.
At least 582,430 people were left without electricity in the communes around the Santiago metropolitan region, the Electricity and Fuels Superintendence added. 328,488 people in Los Lagos and another 161,843 residents in Los Ríos did not have power as well.
However, local broadcasters also reported that several cities had announced the return of electricity by 5 p.m. local time.
Tohá logged on to X to announce that an emergency meeting was scheduled with the Disaster Risk Management Committees.
“Given the power outage that is occurring between the regions of Arica and Parinacota and Los Lagos, I have called for an immediate meeting of the National #Cogrid [Disaster Risk Management Committees], where we will adopt measures to address the emergency and work on restoring the service,” she said.
At the time, Tohá maintained during a press conference that residents should be patient while the government works on the stressful issue.
“I call for calm, to understand that it is a failure in the system, that we are not the object of an attack, that the service should be restored promptly,” she said.
The outage has shut down several subway services, which have prompted residents to use buses — being filled to capacity.
The lack of power had also caused street lights to go out and allowed for even more issues on the roads, including at least one crash between a car and minivan — which left four people badly injured in Santiago.
Furthermore, residents also reported that taxis and Uber quickly surged their driving prices in order to monetarily take advantage of the outage.
Transportation Minister Juan Carlos Múñoz stated that at least 4,500 buses will be on the road on Wednesday morning if power does not return on Tuesday night.
The country’s largest airport, Arturo Merino Benitez, which is also located in Santiago — was still operating.
Escondida, the world’s largest copper mine, was still without electricity, according to Reuters.
Organizers of the Viña del Mar International Song Festival, a major festival in the country, were holding meetings with authorities to decide if the show should be canceled. The festival is supposed to end on Friday.
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