Dam failure triggers huge blackout in Brazil


An important hydroelectric dam between Brazil and Paraguay failed on Tuesday night making most of central and south Brazil completely powerless. Paraguay and Uruguay also claim having some related blackouts. It didn't last very long, as the power came slowly back on that same night. The incident at Itaipu caused an outage of 18,000 megawatts. That's enough power to light up the whole state of Sao Paulo! Millions of people were affected by the blackout since cities like Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paolo, and four other cities were powerless. The capital though, was not affected.