The UK’s Daily Mail has some great photos taken during last night’s massive blackout in Brazil. The 2-hour outage was caused by problems with the power lines that carry electricity from the Itaipu dam to points across Brazil. Paraguay (yes, the entire country) was also without power for about 20 minutes.
The photos give a rare glimpse of a city full of office buildings and skyscrapers standing mostly dark. The relatively feeble glow from random generators and the head- and taillights of passing cars are nearly the only light in many of these images; I especially love the eerie shot looking out over the rooftops of darkened buildings dotted with the tiny lights of rooftop antennae.
The Itaipu dam is the world’s second biggest hydroelectric producer, supplying 20 percent of Brazil’s electricity. China’s Three Gorges dam (photographed by Edward Burtynsky) is the largest.
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