The Minister of Mines and Energy of Brazil, Alexandre Silveira, assured this Tuesday that he will ask the police for an investigation to determine if there was human action behind an electrical blackout that affected 25 states of the country and the Federal District.
The blackout, the reason for which is unknown, affected the Brazilian power grid for more than six hours on Tuesday. Service was fully restored after noon.
Because it is a highly sensitive sector (…), I am asking the Ministry of Justice to send an investigation request to the Federal Police to find out in detail what could have happened,” Silveira said during a press conference, in which he called the event “extremely rare.”
The Minister of Mines and Energy assured that the problem originated in the north of the state of Ceará (northeast), where there was an “overload in the transmission system”, which led to the network “collapsing” in that region.
It was an event that caused the interruption in the North and Northeast region, and, due to a planned contingency, minimized the load of the South, Southeast and Central-West regions, so that there would be no total interruption in those regions,” he explained.
The authorities presume that there was a “second event” in a transmission line in another part of the country, so far unidentified.
In addition to the police, the Brazilian intelligence agency (Abin) will participate in the investigation, justified, according to Silveira, by the “context” of the episode and that it is a “sensitive sector” for Brazilians.
With information from AFP.
