‘We were trapped as sardines in the dark’

More than eight million homes in Chile were left without energy on Tuesday afternoon after an electricity transmission line failed, cutting the supply of electricity to much of the country.

In the capital, Santiago, the entire underground trains system was suspended almost immediately. Thousands of people had to be evacuated and the stations immersed themselves in the dark.

“We were like sardines in the dark,” described a passenger at the time his underground train stopped.

Many of those who had been in elevators within the stations when the power cut occurred had to be released by firefighters.

A woman in her 70s was trapped in an elevator between two floors in a building in Santiago.

She told the local media that she had “kicked the door” of the elevator to attract attention to his difficult situation and his screams finally alerted the janitor.

“I’m brave, I told myself ‘I’m not going to die here,” he said.

The shared videos on social networks also showed the subway passengers using the lanterns of their mobile phones to find the output of the dark stations.

According to Santiago Metro, the Metro evacuation was completed 90 minutes after the power cut, but the interruption caused by the interruption was carried out for many more hours.

The 150 additional buses deployed in Ferry passengers were not sufficiently sufficiently to compensate for the subway suspension, which transports an average of 2.3 million passengers every day.

The long lines were formed at the bus stops, where the passengers got angry more and more when the full buses did not stop.

His number soon swelled with the workers sent early because most of the offices were paralyzed by the lack of electricity.

“The power was activated at 3:00 pm, so we had no power at all,” said a merchant in Santiago. “People began to close around 4 or 5 pm.”

Traffic in the capital was interrupted by the failure of several traffic lights.

A truck crashed with a car at a crossing where traffic lights were off and there were reports of at least another accident also caused by the lack of traffic lights in operation.

With worsened stagnation, thousands of people were forced to walk their destinations in summer temperatures of around 30 Celsius (86 Fahrenheit).

One of them, Sharon Ortiz, a 28 -year -old waitress, said the public transport system had “collapsed.”

“I got to work two hours late, I was caught in the middle of the Costanera (shopping center) and from there I had to walk,” he said.

Some people hooked elevations at the rear of the trucks.

Restaurants and coffees were among the businesses affected by the power cut.

Some remained open to offer those who walked home a place to rest, but many closed because cash machines, card machines and refrigerators did not work.

Some of the most dramatic scenes developed in Fantasilandia, a amusement park in Santiago, where at least a dozen people were trapped at the top of a roller coaster.

The Fantasilandia manager said that while the park had support generators, the attractions would not be restarted immediately for security reasons.

The hospitals trusted emergency generators for energy.