Venezuela’s worst ever power outage in recent history has continued since Thursday, as video and photos continue to come out of the cash and resource strapped country showing entire cities blanketed in darkness.
Stretching into day two of the mass electrical shutdown, 23 out of 24 states remain in darkness, according to the AP, in a prolonged situation now reaching crisis levels given reports that hospitals are struggling to keep back-up generators running and many businesses are forced to remain shuttered.
The nation-wide blackout quickly turned into a blame-game over who’s at fault, with many in the opposition blaming the Maduro government’s mismanagement and notorious corruption, and with pro-regime voices blaming right-wing saboteurs taking orders from the United States.
Caracas has even gone so far to point the finger at Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio, who only yesterday as part of a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing said that the US should promote “widespread unrest” in order to bring down the Maduro government. Though offering no specific proof Caracas officials accused the US and opposition activists of causing “pandemonium” for several days, culminating in the blackout.
President Nicolas Maduro gave brief public acknowledgement of the outage on Twitter, saying, “The electricity war declared and directed by the imperialist United States against our people will be overcome!” and added, “No one can defeat the people of Bolivar and Chavez. Maximum unity patriots!”
Doctors fighting to keep this incubator-dependent baby alive during the massive power outage in #Venezuela https://t.co/7SUZypfPP9
— Annika H Rothstein (@truthandfiction) March 8, 2019
According to the AP the blackout struck during Thursday evening’s peak rush hour period, and after extending through the night Maduro reportedly ordered all schools and government locations closed. Businesses were further ordered closed in order allow work crews easy access to the failing power infrastructure.
Power in some parts of Caracas has reportedly begun to return, though remains off or intermittent in may other parts of the country. Some parts of the country reportedly had power restored within hours, but others remain in darkness now 24 hours later.
According to VOA news Venezuelan officials “said the hydroelectric station at the Guri Dam, one of the world’s largest, had been sabotaged, but offered no evidence.”
And predictably, US officials capitalized on the Venezuelans’ plight, with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo taking to Twitter to say: “Maduro’s policies bring nothing but darkness,” and “No food. No medicine. Now, no power. Next, no Maduro.”
The power outage and the devastation hurting ordinary Venezuelans is not because of the USA. It’s not because of Colombia. It’s not Ecuador or Brazil, Europe or anywhere else. Power shortages and starvation are the result of the Maduro regime’s incompetence.
— Secretary Pompeo (@SecPompeo) March 8, 2019
Pompeo also expressly denied pro-Maduro officials’ accusations that the United States and its regional allies were engaged in acts of sabotage aimed at regime change.
Urgent: Network measurements show extraordinary nationwide impact as #Venezuela is knocked offline amid power outages from 8:55 PM UTC (4:55 PM VET); incident ongoing #7Mar #SinLuzhttps://t.co/W3eqPWQUPz pic.twitter.com/PkLgQfm0B4
— NetBlocks.org (@netblocks) March 7, 2019
According to the AP, limited social media posts coming out of Venezuela by those who still had cell phone charges and signals included images of darkened cities that looked like “ghost towns”.
The AP report described:
One user posted a video of a nurse manually pumping air into the lungs of an infant. Others posted photos of long lines of cars queuing up at gas stations in hopes of getting fuel. A man anguished that he’d gone 17 hours without hearing from his mother.
“What impotence!” he lamented.
#Update: Video of the highway through the city of #Caracas in #Venezuela, Skyline is complete dark not one single light in the buildings as complete power outage proceeds in the country. pic.twitter.com/ArsitmxAlJ
— Sotiri Dimpinoudis (@sotiridi) March 7, 2019
And crucially, the AP continued, “Netblocks, a non-government group based in Europe that monitors internet censorship, said online connectivity data indicates the outage is the largest in recent record in Latin America.”
The extreme nature of the blackout impacting cell and internet communications also continued in to Friday: “The observatory warned Friday that some of the remaining networks were starting to fall offline as generators and backups began depleting and cell towers shut down,” the AP reported.
However, 23 hours in to the mass outage there were signs of electricity coming back to some regions of the country, with Net Blocks still reporting “new outages slowing the recovery” and internet connectivity back up to 20%, down from just 2% nationwide earlier in the day Friday.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2Camx7o Tyler Durden