Venezuela hit with another blackout, 91 percent without internet

A second blackout in less than a week occurred in Venezuela on Wednesday, leaving the vast majority of the country’s residents without internet connections or other electrical needs.

Bloomberg News reports that a blackout early Wednesday caused major issues as Venezuelan officials were already struggling to bring the country’s power grid back online following a similar outage that began on Monday.

{mosads}A graph tracking disruptions to the country’s internet connectivity by NetBlocks.org showed about 91 percent of the country offline just before 6 a.m. on Wednesday, the worst outage the country has faced in weeks.

Urgent: New disruption identified in #Venezuela 40 hours after onset of national power outage; 91% of country now offline reversing partial recovery; incident ongoing #SinLuz #Apagon #27Mar ⬇️https://t.co/7nhWVW9v7a pic.twitter.com/xA8ZRdmagc

— NetBlocks.org (@netblocks) March 27, 2019

The news comes two days after an outage began to cause blackouts across the nation’s 23 states that Venezuela’s government, headed by President Nicolás Maduro, argued was the result of U.S.-backed sabotage of a major hydroelectric power plant.

“A macabre, perverse plan constructed in Washington and executed with factions of the extreme Venezuelan right,” Venezuela’s Vice President Delcy Rodríguez said of the outage, according to NBC News. The U.S. has denied any involvement.

Juan Guaidó, head of the national assembly and the country’s self-declared interim leader, said that this week’s power outage was proof that Maduro’s government was incapable of running the country.

“In the midst of the anguish of darkness, when our people need certainty in the midst of the anguish of another blackout, how do they intend to keep repeating the excuses of ‘electric war’ and sabotage? They are liars and corrupt,” he wrote of Maduro’s officials.

En medio de la angustia de la oscuridad, cuando nuestra gente necesita certeza en medio de la angustia de otro apagón, ¿cómo pretenden seguir repitiendo las excusas de la “guerra eléctrica” y el sabotaje?

Son mentirosos y corruptos
(1/3) #ApagonRojo

— Juan Guaidó (@jguaido) March 25, 2019