Strong winds leave more than two million customers without power in Brazil

More than two million customers in the Sao Paulo metropolitan area were left without electricity on Wednesday after strong gusts of wind generated by an extratropical cyclone hit Brazil's largest city. According to data sent by Enel and cited by Reuters, about 35% of customers were affected, and the situation caused new tensions in a region already sensitive to repeated interruptions in recent years. By noon, the power outage affected about 2.2 million customers, of which 1.4 million in the city of Sao Paulo alone. Enel representatives said that teams were mobilized "at maximum capacity" to restore the network, but interventions are being hampered by extreme weather conditions.

The civil defense in Sao Paulo warned that winds reached speeds of more than 80 km/h, and in some areas could exceed 90 km/h, a level that endangers infrastructure, road traffic and the safety of residents. Authorities announced that the entire territory of the state of Sao Paulo is under severe storm warning. The intervention forces were in high demand: firefighters registered 514 calls for fallen trees and five calls for flooding, a sign that the weather phenomenon had extensive effects on the city and its suburbs.

The crisis is reigniting criticism of the local subsidiary of Enel. In the past two years, violent storms and similar episodes have caused power outages that, in some cases, lasted for days, affecting millions of consumers and triggering public protests. Local authorities have repeatedly accused the operator of a lack of investment in network modernization, and the population complains of delays in interventions and a lack of transparency regarding the state of the infrastructure. Although Enel Sao Paulo claims to be constantly working to consolidate networks and digitize distribution systems, recurring events show that the metropolis' energy infrastructure remains vulnerable to extreme weather phenomena, increasingly frequent in the context of climate change.