La Palma Blackout: Over 50,000 Lose Power as Storm Hits Canaries
By midmorning, power had returned to roughly 75% of those affected, about four and a half hours after the outage began, according to the national grid operator. The Canary Islands government put the start of the island-wide blackout at 6.42 am local time (0642GMT).
The trouble began around 4 am, when lightning struck an electrical substation and ignited a fire that knocked out medium- and low-voltage lines. Service was initially restored, but a later failure at the Los Guinchos power plant plunged the entire island into darkness. What triggered the disconnection has not been determined.
The island’s port, airport, General Hospital and Hospital de Dolores stayed online using backup power.
At 2 am, the regional government raised its highest rainfall alert for eastern La Palma. Emergency officials said the area received 62 millimeters (2.4 inches) of rain in a single hour and 138 millimeters (5.4 inches) over 12 hours.
Firefighters also attended a storm-related house fire. Landslides were reported but proved milder than feared, a Spanish broadcaster said.
An orange alert for heavy rainfall stays in force until Tuesday morning.
The Canary Islands escaped the April 2025 blackout that cut power to mainland Spain and Portugal for about 10 hours. A European expert panel concluded in March that the earlier outage stemmed from several factors, among them voltage-control failures that caused generators to disconnect one after another.
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