Demonstrating for Texas what can happen when you don’t address vital infrastructure, the entire nation of Ecuador lost electricity on Wednesday after power lines around the country started to fail, causing a cascade effect that took down the nation’s power grid, NBC News reports.
“There is a failure in the transmission line that caused a cascade disconnection, so there’s no electricity at a national scale,” Public Works Minister Roberto Luque, who also serves as Ecudor’s energy minister while there’s a vacancy in the post. Passengers were stuck on the subway in the capital city of Quito, while above ground, traffic grew chaotic after traffic light went dark.