Ecuador Hit by Nationwide Blackout

Ecuador was plunged into a nationwide blackout on Wednesday afternoon, and the country’s public works minister blamed the emergency on the failure of a key transmission line.

The minister, Roberto Luque, said in a statement on X that he had received a report from the national electricity operator, CENACE, about “a failure in the transmission line that caused a cascade disconnection, so there is no energy service nationwide.”

He said the authorities were working to resolve the outage “as quickly as possible.” Within hours, power had begun to return to some parts of Quito, the capital.

The South American country of 18 million people has been struggling with an energy crisis for several years. Failing infrastructure, a lack of maintenance and a dependence on imported energy have all contributed to rolling blackouts — though none have been as widespread as this one.

Around 3:15 p.m. Wednesday, the majority of Ecuadoreans found themselves without power.

Some of the country’s energy comes from neighboring Colombia, a nation that has struggled to generate enough power for its own domestic consumption.

A $2.25 billion Chinese-built hydroelectric power plant, the Coca Codo Sinclair Dam, was supposed to help solve Ecuador’s problem. Located on the Coca River in the province of Napo, 62 miles east of Quito, it is the largest energy project in Ecuador.