What happened

An overload at a substation on Honduras's Caribbean coast caused a 230-kilovolt supply line to fail on 17 September 2019, according to Leonardo Deras, energy generation manager for Honduras's National Electricity Company (ENEE). The failure cascaded through the regionally interconnected Central American power grid, cutting electricity simultaneously in Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala. In Nicaragua, the outage affected the capital Managua and fifteen other provinces, also disrupting internet service and water distribution in parts of the capital; in Honduran cities, traffic lights stopped functioning, disrupting road traffic. Power was restored across the affected countries within roughly two hours, from about 11:48 to 13:55 local time. This is documented as an accidental cascading equipment failure, not an attack.

When cited sources give different casualty, damage or spill figures for this event, they’re reported side by side above rather than merged into one number. See how confidence levels work.