Chile’s government implemented a state of emergency and imposed a curfew in response to a widespread power blackout that affected millions of households, including those in the capital city of Santiago. The outage, which commenced in the afternoon, impacted various regions, from the northern city of Arica to Los Lagos in the south. Santiago experienced disruptions in traffic lights, elevators, and the subway network.

By late Tuesday, power was restored to approximately four million households, according to President Gabriel Boric. However, he emphasized that the recovery process was slow and unstable, and warned that the situation remained delicate. Boric blamed the country’s power companies for the occurrence of the outage and their inability to restore power quickly, describing the situation as “outrageous.” The outage was attributed to a failure in the transmission system.

Soldiers and national police officers were dispatched to the affected regions, while helicopters hovered above Santiago. Emergency services, hospitals, prisons, and airports were operating on backup electricity systems and generators, according to the national disaster agency.

John Bartlett contributed to the reporting.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/25/world/americas/chile-power-outage.html