A "massive failure" in an electrical interconnection system left Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay completely without power, and for many customers, restoring electricity would take all day, a utility distributor said Sunday.
Parts of Chile and southern Brazil experienced outages as well, said Edesur, the Buenos Aires-based company. Chile's system was running normally again Sunday afternoon, CNN Chile reported.
The company later posted an updated statement removing Uruguay and Paraguay from the list of countries that were entirely without electricity, but it isn't clear how many residents in those two countries have had their power restored. Power was only partially restored in Uruguay, the country's energy authority said.
Power had been restored to more than half of the country by Sunday evening, Gustavo Lopetegui, Argentina's energy secretary, said in a press conference.
Lopetegui said that experts are trying to determine the cause of the unprecedented blackout. As of now, no explanation for the widespread power failure has been identified.
In a statement on its website, Edesur said a "collapse" in Argentina's government-operated interconnection system occurred around 7 a.m. (6 a.m. ET).
The outage "is the first generalized blackout that Argentina has had in its history," Edesur spokesman Alejandra MartÃnez told CNN affiliate TN.
Edesur is prioritizing any customer who depends on electricity for health reasons, it said, but because the power outage is so serious, anyone experiencing problems should go to a medical center.
A tweet posted just before 10 a.m. (9 a.m. ET) said the company had begun generating electricity in Buenos Aires and the surrounding area. It said restoring power in greater Buenos Aires would take several hours.
Lucas Rodriguez tweeted a video of the Argentine capital in darkness before dawn, saying he'd never seen anything like it.
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