Ecuador suffered a nationwide power outage on Wednesday, leaving some 18 million people in the dark for hours, a senior government minister said.
Public Works Minister Roberto Luque blamed the outage on faulty transmission lines.
Around Wednesday afternoon local time, the subway system in the capital Quito was paralyzed and traffic signals stopped operating.
The government later said 95% of the country’s power had been restored.
Shortly after the outage, Mr Luke, who is also the acting energy secretary, posted on
Quito Mayor Pabel Muñoz said in an interview with X: “This incident must be serious because it even caused a power outage in the subway, which has its own independent system.”
Quito Metro said services were disrupted “due to a general failure of the national interconnected electricity system.”
Local media reported that drinking water had been suspended in some areas, and some residents expressed frustration at the lack of warnings about suspensions.
“Now I have to work miracles with the bottles I have at home,” Guayas resident Andrew Medina told Expresso newspaper.
Business owners are also dissatisfied. Diana Rosales, a hairdresser in Guayaquil who was cutting hair when the outage occurred, said: “We pay a lot of bills and still receive poor service. this is not fair.
The Ministry of Education said that evening classes in educational institutions across the country have also been suspended and switched to online teaching.
in April, Drought forces government to announce series of blackouts This caused power outages in major cities for several hours.
The country gets most of its energy from neighboring Colombia.
