In the middle of the afternoon, Venezuelans experienced a large-scale blackout that darkened the streets of at least half of country. The loss of power led to confusion and hysteria, as people tried to contact loved ones and tried to make their way home.

Friday afternoon sometime between 3 p.m. and 4 p.m., all power was cut off to most of Caracas. Subway trains stopped working, traffic lights went dark, and all other power ceased in the capital. People scrambled outside to see what had happened, but without electricity they could not use any form of communication. Cell phone lines were clogged with the bulk of thousands of callers wanting to speak with relatives.

The blackout interrupted a televised speech by President Nicolas Maduro, who has struggled to reign in opposition activists protesting around the country in the last four months. Part of their argument opposes the socialist policies enacted by Maduro's predecessor, Hugo Chavez. Among these policies was the nationalization of the energy industry in 2007, according to Reuters.

Venezuelan newspaper El Nacional reported that the outage began when a power station known as San Gerónimo-La Arenosa malfunctioned, which led to a cascading malfunction of other power stations and towers. The malfunctioned led to 18 states and Caracas to lose power.

The newspaper stated that more than 16 million people were affected by the blackout, around 60 percent of Venezuela's population. However, this is not the first time the nation has lost power. In December, opposition members sabotaged a power line and three months prior a power line near the one that failed Friday also malfunctioned and caused a national blackout.

By 7 p.m., electric power had been restored to 99 percent of Caracas, according to a statement by Chacon, Bloomberg reported.

"We expect to inform the nation later this evening or tomorrow about the cause of the power outage that has affected nearly all the states in Venezuela," Chacon said in telephone interview broadcast yesterday with Globovision.

Power was disrupted when a windstorm knocked down eight electrical towers on two separate transmission lines, which triggered the above mentioned malfunction. Maduro recalled the December blackout in a televised speech following the restoration of power.

"We're going to fully investigate these strange circumstances to determine the cause of the failure," Maduro said. "It didn't happen because of excessive demand and didn't take place at a peak hour. There was an intense windstorm in the east, like a hurricane."