Via the BBC: Nationwide blackout hits Colombia

Colombia has been hit by a nationwide power cut, hitting commercial centres and causing chaos on the roads.

Ten people were trapped in lifts and the stock exchange was forced to suspend trading, officials said.

They said the blackout, at about 1015 local time (1515 GMT), was caused by an undetermined technical failure at a substation in the capital, Bogota.

More than 80% of Colombia was affected. Power returned to most parts of the country after several hours.

Only some rural regions were still being affected by the blackout, officials said.

[…]

Luis Alarcon, manager of state-controlled electricity company ISA, said the power outage began at Bogota’s substation and quickly spread over the country.

Mr Alarcon said the incident was not caused by a left-wing rebel attack.

It was my personal experience that Colombian utilities were not known for their redundancy, such as the long weekend when they had to do maintenance on the main aqueduct going into Bogota and so then we had no water in the most of the city for two-plus days. (Although since then I think an additional aqueduct has been built).

And there were the rolling blackouts in Bogota during the early 1990s when drought conditions hampered the hydroelectric power plants.