By Fabian Cambero and Alexander Villegas
SANTIAGO (Reuters) – A large power outage struck vast swaths of Chile on Tuesday, interrupting mining operations in the world’s biggest copper producer and leaving residents of Santiago without electricity.
Areas from the mining-intensive north to the central and southern regions that are home to most of the population, including capital Santiago, were affected, according to the government.
Escondida, the world’s largest copper mine, was without electricity, a source close to the matter told Reuters, while state-owned copper miner Codelco said all its mines had been affected.
Chuquicamata, Andina, Salvador and El Teniente mines were without power and its other mines were using backup power generation to operate on a partial basis, Codelco said.
Antofagasta said it was operating its mines with a backup power generator.
The power outage affected the country from the northern Arica and Parinacota region to the southern Los Lagos region, according to Chile’s national disaster prevention and response service SENAPRED, although no emergency situations have been reported.
Streets lights in the capital were not working, according to Reuters witnesses. The Santiago metro, which transports millions of passengers, was also affected.
Electricity transmission companies are working on investigating the origins of the failure and restarting service, said SENAPRED.
Chile’s interior minister Carolina Toha said the outage was caused by a transmission line failure in the country’s north, ruling out a cyber attack as a cause.
Toha said that power should start coming back online in the “coming hours.”
“We hope that what we’ve been told will happen, that in the next few hours we’ll have electrical service back,” Toha said. “And if that’s not the case, we’ll have to take different measures.”
(Reporting by Fabian Andres Cambero and Alexander Villegas, Editing by Rosalba O’Brien)
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