Electrical woes lead to major national blackout
By the A.M. Costa Rica staff

A wave of electrical outages culminated Thursday in a blackout of the whole country. The lights went out at 7:56 p.m. in much of San José. The power was off until at least 10:30, and there was no clear explanation of what happened.
For tourists and expats in the central city the outage results in a series of big parties. At the Sportsman's Lodge in north San José the bar stayed open with candlelight.

Both the Hotel Del Rey and the Casino Colonial have their own generators, and these proved to be gathering places for expats.
"The alternative would be staying in the dark in my room," said one tourist.

Hospital Calderón Guardia and other similar facilities have their own backup generating plants, so there was no crisis. A number of other government buildings had power when private facilities did not.
There was a dearth of information to the public. Local television stations continued their telenovelas. Only Radio Eco and Radio National seemed to take notice of the outage, although both were running on backup power.

Callers to a Radio Nacional talk show suggested that the outage was a protest by Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad workers against the free trade treaty.
The company known as ICE announced earlier in the day that its power plant at Moín had suffered a problem with one turbine. However, sporadic
power outages had been plaguing the country since Wednesday. Homeward bound workers faced malfunctioning traffic lights throughout the late afternoon and evening.

At one point Barrio Los Angeles de Cartago seemed to be the only place in the whole country to have normal power.
The official story from ICE was hard to get. One version is that two more oil-fired plants beside the one at Moín had failed. Then the company said a power transmission line between Arenal and Cañas had failed.

Whatever happened, the outage caused a major loss in business for supermarkets and commercial outlets that did not have their own means of generation. A quick tour of the city during the peak of the outage showed most businesses closed with steel doors locked.
The overloaded cellular telephone service was not responding shortly after the major outage. Later, calls were being routed. The land-line telephone system functions throughout the outage.

Shortly before the power came back on, ICE officials were speculating that the power would be off for perhaps 12 more hours.
A similar outage hit the country Aug. 21, 2001. That problem was blamed at first on a tree that fell on a line, again in Guanacaste, and later on a lightning strike.

ICE is the major electrical producer. In the Central Valley the power is distributed mainly by the Compañía Nacional de Fuerza y Luz and the Empresa de Servicios Públicos de Heredia S.A.

From what I understand, the black out was CITY-WIDE... That's insane!!! Does anyone know if something happened to cause this?

Ruffnutz

You guys should spend some time in the Dominican Republic.
I don't know it has improved but in the late '90s you could expect a couple hours of no power DAILY.