By Mark Memmott

Much of the power is out in two of the world's most populous cities -- Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

According to Reuters, "tens of millions of people" are without electricity. The wire service adds that:

CBN Radio reported that Rio's state governor had ordered extra police onto the streets. The website of Globo TV said other major cities, including Belo Horizonte and the capital Brasilia, were also affected by the power cut. The electricity operator in the state of Minas Gerais said the massive outage was caused by a problem at the Itaipu dam.

The Associated Press reports that "Mines and Energy Minister Edison Lobao says authorities do not know why the dam went offline. He says a possible cause was a large storm that hit the area around the dam straddling the Brazil-Paraguay border."

Just this past Sunday, CBS News' 60 Minutes -- in a report about the threat that terrorist/hackers could present to the world's power grids -- said it had learned that Brazil's power system has been attacked by hackers in recent years. Brazilian officials, according to the AP, have downplayed that report.

Update at 6:45 a.m. ET, Nov. 11: The power started to come back on in Brazil after about two hours in most places, the AP reports. The wire service also says that power went out in all of Praguay for about 30 minutes last night.

"Questions remained about what happened," AP adds.

Jorge Miguel Samek, the head of Itaipu Binacional, the agency in charge of the dam, said there was a "99% chance the blackout happened because of a storm."

In Rio, there was "a spike in assaults around the Maracana football stadium," AP says.

categories: Foreign News

9:20 - November 10, 2009

What is this?

Share