Nationwide Power Outage Hits Ecuador Leaving Millions Without Electricity

Ecuador was hit by a nationwide blackout on Wednesday afternoon, affecting hospitals, homes, and major infrastructure such as Quito's subway system. The Public Works Minister, Roberto Luque, attributed the emergency to a failure of a key transmission line, stating "There's a failure in the transmission line that caused a cascade disconnection." However, it is unclear whether this was the sole cause of the blackout, as some reports suggest the outage lasted for varying lengths of time across different cities. The Ecuadorean government has been struggling with an energy crisis for years and had previously declared an energy emergency in April.