Reported substation explosion leaves one million people on the Spanish holiday island Tenerife without electricity for nine hours.
The incident occurred at around 1 pm on Sunday 29 September when the issue at the Granadilla substation on the south of the island triggered a reaction in the main Las Caletillas power station.
Trams in the capital Santa Cruz ground to a halt and dozens of people needed to be rescued from lifts by firefighters.
Traffic lights also cut out and air-conditioning units packed up, with many hotels and restaurants left counting the cost.
Airports serving the popular Canary Island tourist resort were unaffected, with a spokesperson for Spanish airports authority AENA explaining: “Tenerife’s airports are operating with generators. For the moment the blackout has not affected operations.”
It’s not the first time that the entire island has been plunged into darkness, with utility company Endesa and Spanish grid operator Red Eléctrica de España both opening investigations to fully understand what caused the outage.
By 6 pm in the evening, 100,000 people had electricity back on, with supplies restored to 65% of the island by 9:30 pm.
