Hospitals struggled to get back-up generators running, businesses shuttered and families anxiously tried to contact loved ones amid Venezuela's worst-ever power outage Friday, raising tensions in a country already on edge from ongoing political turmoil.
March 8, 2019, 8:28 PM GMTCARACAS, Venezuela — Hospitals struggled to get back-up generators running, businesses shuttered and families anxiously tried to contact loved ones amid Venezuela's worst-ever power outage Friday, raising tensions in a country already on edge from ongoing political turmoil.
By early Friday afternoon, residents and pro-government state broadcaster VTV reported that power was starting to return to parts of Caracas. The stoplights in several neighborhoods were back on while in one office building the electricity flickered to life and then turned off. Without power to charge cell phones, normally hyper-active social media was eerily quiet. Those who managed to get a signal used the hashtag #SinLuz — meaning without light in English — to share images of cities throughout the country that on Friday resembled ghost towns.
Zaida Rodriguez, 40, a cardiovascular technician, walked several miles to the private clinic where she works only to be told by bosses that she should leave because the facility would treat only urgent cases and operate with a skeletan staff in order to save on power. The government keeps home power bills exceptionally low — just a couple dollars a month — relying heavily on subsidies from the Maduro administration, which is under increasing financial duress.
Pro-government officials often blame outages on Venezuela's opposition, accusing them of attacking power substations with Molotov cocktails, though they rarely provide any evidence.
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