Venezuela blackout leaves commuters scrambling, silences president

CARACAS (Reuters) - A blackout cut power to much of Venezuela on Friday afternoon, snarling traffic in the capital Caracas and other major cities and interrupting a televised speech by the president in the country's second nationwide electricity outage in a year.

The blackout affected Caracas for about three hours, panicking commuters anxious to get home before dark in the crime-ridden city, but power was gradually restored by early evening and underground metro trains were running again. Venezuela's second city, Maracaibo, was also hit.

An outage at a power station in the center of the country led to other generation centers going offline and disrupting the supply across a broad swath of the Andean nation, Electricity Minister Jesse Chacon told state television.

The OPEC nation has suffered an increasing number of blackouts in recent years, which critics have attributed to low electricity tariffs and limited state investment following the 2007 nationalization of the sector.

ttp://news.yahoo.com/venezuela-blackout-leaves-commuters-scrambling-silences-president-005545571.html

mixed feelings I am sure. No power but no dipshit maduro either.