“Venezuela Slowly Gets Power Back After Alleged “Sabotage” of Grid”

After a 12-hour blackout on Friday that hit all 24 states, Venezuela is slowly getting its power back on. On state TV, President Nicolás Maduro said that power was being restored while officials look into a possible attack on the transmission systems of the Guri hydropower plant in the southeast of Venezuela.

Maduro stressed that the safety steps put in place after an attack on Guri in 2019 had helped protect the site this time. Caracas’s mayor, Carmen Melendez, said that the power was back on by the time Maduro spoke to the country. But even though some parts of the city had power by Friday afternoon, a lot of the country was still without it. The metro system was still down, and people were waiting in long lines at gas stops to get ready for more power blackouts.

The blackout happened as emotions rose after the controversial election in July, when opposition leader Edmundo González said he beat Maduro by a huge margin, even though the election authority said Maduro won a third term. Before, Maduro said that the blackout was caused by “desperate attacks from fascists.” He also shared this message on his Telegram account. Freddy Ñañez, the minister of information, said that the government had put in place “anti-coup protocols” to stop “sabotage from extreme-right powers.”

Since 2019, when a huge blackout left the whole country without power for almost a week, Venezuela has had more and more power outages. Years of bad management by the government and not enough money for hydropower facilities have made the problem worse. Power rationing is now normal, especially in rural areas outside of Caracas. The latest power outage makes the country’s already difficult task of keeping its power supply stable even worse.