This morning, Panama awoke to an unprecedented nationwide blackout, leaving millions without power and thrusting the country into chaos. The crisis began with a dramatic explosion and fire at the La Chorrera Thermoelectric Power Plant, a critical hub in Panama’s energy grid. President José Raúl Mulino swiftly addressed the nation, attributing the outage to a malfunction in a private power generator that triggered a system-wide protective shutdown. While restoration efforts are underway, the incident has exposed vulnerabilities in Panama’s infrastructure and disrupted daily life on an extraordinary scale.

The blackout’s ripple effects are profound. Homes, businesses, and hospitals are grappling with power loss, while water supply services—dependent on electricity for treatment plants and wells—have faltered, compounding the crisis. Emergency crews are racing to mitigate the damage, but no firm timeline for full recovery has been set. President Mulino has demanded an urgent investigation from ASEP, Panama’s energy regulator, to pinpoint the precise cause, promising transparency as the situation unfolds.

Panama is no stranger to outages—2017 saw 1.5 million affected by transformer failures, and a mysterious five-hour blackout struck in 2023—but this event dwarfs past incidents in scope and impact. Speculation swirls about whether the explosion was accidental or deliberate, though official reports remain preliminary. As power trickles back to some areas, the nation watches anxiously, hoping for answers and resilience. For now, Panama remains in the dark, both literally and figuratively, as it confronts this unfolding emergency.