BAKU, Azerbaijan — Azerbaijan has been hit by a massive blackout affecting most of the country, the worst power outage since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union.

President Ilham Aliyev set up a government commission to investigate the accident at a power plant in Mingechavir that caused the blackout early Tuesday. The Emergencies Ministry said a transformer’s breakdown in Mingechavir sparked a fire that was put out in 20 minutes and inflicted no casualties.

The blackout came amid a heat wave in the Caspian Sea nation, with temperatures exceeding 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) resulting in a power consumption surge that plunged the capital, Baku, and nearly 40 other cities and regions into pitch darkness.

It took several hours to fully restore power in Baku but efforts to restore power in other regions continued. </s> BAKU, Azerbaijan (AP) — A massive blackout hit Azerbaijan and affected most of the country Tuesday, the worst power outage since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union.

President Ilham Aliyev set up a government commission to investigate the accident at a power plant in Mingechavir that officials said caused the blackout. The Emergencies Ministry said the breakdown of a transformer in Mingechavir sparked a fire that was put out in 20 minutes and did not cause any deaths.

The blackout occurred as the Caspian Sea nation experiences a heat wave, with temperatures exceeding 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) causing power consumption to spike. The outage plunged the capital, Baku, and nearly 40 other cities and regions into darkness.

Officials said power was restored in Baku after several hours, but several subway stations in the capital were closed. Utility crews struggled through the day to restore power in other regions.

On Tuesday evening, Baku and other regions suffered a second blackout. Officials wouldn’t immediately name the cause. </s> BAKU, Azerbaijan (AP) — The subway in Azerbaijan's capital has suspended service in the wake of a massive blackout in the Caspian Sea nation.

The authorities said the Baku subway will be closed for the entire day Wednesday due to unstable power supply. City officials provided extra buses to help commuters.

The power outage hit the ex-Soviet nation early Tuesday when a transformer at one of the nation's power plants caught fire. It was the worst blackout in Azerbaijan since the 1991 Soviet collapse, and energy workers were struggling for a second day to restore supply.

President Ilham Aliyev has set up a government commission to investigate the reasons behind the blackout. </s> Late on Monday, Azerbaijan saw a major blackout after an explosion occurred and fire broke out at the Mingachevir station.

"The electricity has been restored at all the strategic facilities in Azerbaijan… In places where there is no electricity, problems will be eliminated within the next hours," Shahbazov said as quoted by the Azeri News Agency (APA).

Tanriverdi Mustafayev, the head of the press service of the Azerishig company, providing energy to the country, in turn, said that the most important facilities — hospitals, subway, international airport, military units — are fully provided with electricity.

According to local media reports, the electricity supply has been restored so far only to some of the northern parts of the country. The explosion reportedly occured at the 6th block of the power plant. The preliminary cause of the blast in HPP's block was allegedly an overload of the electric energy in the local power grid. However, local authorities have launched an immediate investigation into the incident, saying that there were no casualties reported. </s> (RFE/RL) — Azerbaijan experienced a total electrical blackout early on July 3, but authorities reported that supplies were quickly being restored throughout the country.

Authorities attributed the massive outage to a explosion in a thermal power station located in the city of Mingachevir.

The office of the presidency said that extremely hot weather — which prompted widespread use of air conditioning — taxed the electrical system and led to the accident.

The outage put residents of the capital city Baku in the dark for hours. But by 3 am local time, power had been restored, the president’s office said.

Temperatures are expected to soar later on July 3 to a high of 43 degrees Celsius, forecasters say, posing further strains for the electrical system. Air conditioning is one of the biggest drains on power worldwide.

Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Emergencies said firefighters brought the fire from the explosion in Mingachevir under control and were cooling down the electrical plant. It said no one was hurt of killed in the explosion.

“Electricity supply will be gradually restored in the country. There is no reason to panic,” a ministry official said. The ministry said electricity had been restored in some northern regions of the country.

Yahya Babanli, a spokesperson for Azerenergy, a state energy supply company, told Real TV that Azerbaijan is trying to import electricity from Georgia and Russia.

Real TV and Azerenergy reported that electrical supply resumed in some Western areas as the result of an energy exchange with Russia.

Babanli said that it could take a long time for the thermal power plant to recover from the explosion, which occurred at a substation connected to several high-voltage power lines. </s> BUENOS AIRES — A blackout stripped all of mainland Argentina and Uruguay of power early Sunday, affecting tens of millions of people in an electrical failure that officials called unprecedented in its scope.

The cause remained under investigation by late Sunday, when power had been largely restored to both countries. Much of Argentina was hit by heavy rainfall over the weekend, and Uruguay’s state-owned utility, UTE, said some systems had been damaged by the recent rain and still needed to be repaired.

“This is the first time something like this has happened across the entire country,” said Alejandra Martínez, a spokeswoman for Edesur, an electricity company in Argentina that serves parts of Buenos Aires and its suburbs. She called it “a complete blackout in Argentina.”

The blackout may have affected a population greater than California’s, across a region four times the size of Texas: Argentina has more than 44 million people, and Uruguay about 3.5 million. </s> A fire killed 25 people at a drug rehabilitation centre in Azerbaijan’s capital Baku on Friday, officials said. The fire broke out at the country’s Drug Abuse Treatment Centre at 6.10 am local time (7:40 am Indian time), the local news agency APA reported. It was put out after about two and a half hours.

Thirty of the 55 people who were in the building at the time of the fire were rescued, a government statement said. Three of them are in hospital.

Soon after the blaze was reported, ambulances and personnel of the fire and emergency services arrived at the building. Officials said the blaze was probably caused by a problem in the power network of the building. They have filed a criminal case and an investigation is under way.

Azerbaijan faces a chronic shortage of rehabilitation centres for its 30,000 registered drug addicts, according to BBC. </s> BUENOS AIRES: A massive outage blacked out Argentina and Uruguay Sunday, leaving both South American countries without electricity, power companies said.

Uruguay's system went down at 7:06 am (1006 GMT), according to the Uruguayan power company UTE, which attributed the outage to "a fault in the Argentine network."

Two Argentine power companies confirmed the failure knocked out electricity throughout Argentina, without specifying the cause.

"A massive failure in the electrical interconnection system left all Argentina and Uruguay without power," Edesur Argentina said on Twitter.

Edenor, Argentina's largest electricity distributor, attributed the outage to a "general failure in the interconnection system.

UTE said the failure left Uruguay's "entire national territory without service, as well as several provinces of the neighbour country. More than an hour after the blackout, UTE said its system was being brought back from zero.

"Some coastal cities already have service and work continues toward general restoration (of power)," it said." </s> Venezuelans woke up to a fourth day of an unprecedented nationwide blackout on Sunday, leaving residents concerned about the impacts of the lack of electricity on the South American country’s health, communications and transport systems.
Azerbaijan's largest blackout since 1991 affects most of the country.