Venezuela in the Dark!

[Kalel]

major power failures has plunged the country into darkness.

Rolling blackouts continue into the 5th day... Doctors preforming surgery via Cellphone lights...

Government blames it on animals, Sabotage and cyberattacks while the people blame poor maintenance due to lack of experts and personal, low wages and general atmosphere of paranoia fed by the secret police.

Several attempts to restart have been attempted but all have failed causing more ruptures in the electrical system destabilizing the whole grid and making it worse.

Venezuela power cut: Lootings as desperation grows
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A shop near her home was looted, she says, and a neighbour gave her some boiled rice.

"I liquidised it, added a little sugar and fed it to my son. But today when he asks me for food, what am I going to give him? I can put up with the hunger. As adults, all we need is a glass of water. But what's a child supposed to do?"

Behind us as we speak, a group of mothers, equally desperate and distressed, start to bang on the doors of the shuttered supermarket, demanding to be let in.

Inside, the cash registers and card machines were not working and the staff were only accepting US dollars in payment.

"We don't use dollars in this country, we don't earn in dollars, we earn in Bolivars", says Majorie, her voice rising once more. "We don't want to loot stores, we don't want to cause problems. What we want is food. We're hungry."

"On Thursday, no-one had any information as to why the emergency generators didn't start, what was happening or why everything was still dark in the intensive care unit." A colleague told her that the children in that ward were being kept alive by manual respiration.

There were babies that were just days old in the neonatal unit and others that were months old in the "intermediate care" unit.

Members of the Bolivarian militia have been guarding the generator at the children's hospital
"As we walked through the ward, we saw a mother crying and we found out that one of the babies in intermediate care had died", Patricia explained.

Despite the best efforts of the medical staff, one of the newborns in the neonatal ward died later that first night, too.

A generator was eventually delivered to the hospital, but in a sign of the chaos reigning during the blackout, it was delivered not by health or government officials but by the feared colectivos.

 

[danielravennest]

My heart goes out to the Venezuelan people. The country has been horribly mis-managed for decades. The lack of food and other consumer products, hyperinflation, and now blackouts are the last stages of collapse. It's like they fought a war and lost, except the enemy was their own government.