Brazil blackout plunges cities into darkness
Updated on 11 November 2009
Tens of millions of people are left without power for five hours after the worst blackout in a decade raises questions about the reliability of the country's energy infrastructure.
Brazil's president has sought an explanation for the blackout which halted trains and caused travel chaos after traffic lights went dead in major cities such as Rio de Janeiro.
The entire country of Paraguay was also plunged into darkness for 15 minutes before power was restored.
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva held an emergency meeting with his energy minister today to try and get to the bottom of the outage. Officials said a major storm downed three power lines that run from a hydroelectric dam on Brazil's border with Paraguay.
The Itaipu dam supplies almost 20 per cent of Brazil's power and 90 per cent of Paraguay's.
But questions still remain as to the cause of the outage as energy experts have queried whether the storm could have caused such widespread damage.
Conspiracy theories behind the power failure have been rife after it emerged that US television network CBS aired a documentary earlier this month claiming that computer hackers have caused blackouts in 2005 and 2007.
