WE WERE a group of friends in an abandoned hotel in downtown São Paulo when the lights started flickering and died shortly after 10pm.
The cables jerry-rigged across the ceiling suggested that it was the building’s electricity that died just as 10 artists opened an exhibition in the charming but crumbling old place, part of the city’s efforts to revitalise the decadent downtown area.
But when we got outside and saw the dark shadow of the iconic Banespa skyscraper looming over a downtown in total darkness, it was clear something was up.
People immediately became nervous – Brazil’s high crime rate coming to mind. São Paulo’s downtown is edgy at the best of times and scary at night. On the taxi ride into the exhibition, the driver made us roll up the windows and ran two red lights rather than stop at junctions where crack addicts loitered in groups. And that was when lights were still on.
I rang a friend whose balcony had an excellent view of the city. He said it was pitch black. Others were hearing the same from friends all over South America’s biggest metropolis. The first rumour of the night started going around. It was the work of the PCC – the city’s main criminal gang which in 2006 forced it to shut down during a wave of attacks on the police.
I tried calling friends in Rio to see what was going on there but the network was overloaded. I finally got on to my friend Bruno in Brasília, the capital.
It seemed the lights were out all over São Paulo, I told him. “All São Paulo? Half of Brazil and Paraguay more like. There are blackouts from Rio Grande do Sul all the way to Pernambuco,” he said. It takes an aircraft four hours to get from Rio Grande do Sul to Pernambuco.
An area greater in size than western Europe was experiencing power cuts, with São Paulo and Rio states – home to more than 57 million people – the hardest hit.
In São Paulo, passengers had to get off subway trains and walk along tracks back to stations that became overcrowded, leading to pushing and panic in several. With no way home, commuters faced a night on the street.
There were scattered reports of looting and assaults on cars slowing down at intersections.
“There was a real sense of fear when I got home just as the lights died,” said Amelia Campos, a hairdresser who lives on the tough periphery of São Paulo.
“No one knew what was going on. The power company and police phones were dead. People just shut themselves up inside. My neighbourhood can be scary at night but with no lights it was really tense. But thanks be to God by this morning all seemed back to normal. The only thing was the bakery didn’t have any bread.”
Yesterday President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who denied that underinvestment was to blame for the worst power outage in a decade, summoned energy minister Edison Lobao to explain what triggered it. Energy officials said it was likely caused by storm damage to the transmission lines from the giant Itaipú hydroelectric dam, which supplies almost a fifth of Brazil’s power and four-fifths of Paraguay’s.
Although some areas on Tuesday got power back in the hour, others had a six-hour wait.
My companions and myself took our chances and headed home. We managed to hail a cab and though all seemed calm, the driver did not stop at one junction the whole way.