Seventy Percent Of Venezuela Was Completely Blacked Out Yesterday

REUTERS/Jorge SilvaVenezuelan Vice President Nicolas Maduro raises his fist next to a painting of President Hugo Chavez during the commemoration of the 21st anniversary of Chavez's attempted coup d'etat in Caracas February 4, 2013. Chavez is still in Cuba recovering from a cancer surgery and has not been seen in public since December 8 last year. Yesterday almost half of Venezuela was in darkness when a transmission line the the country's infamously sensitive power grid was tripped, the BBC reports.

The military was called to keep order across the nation as 11 out of the country's 23 states, or about 70% of the country's population, had to make due without things like traffic lights and underground transportation.

While blackouts in Venezuela aren't that rare, the scale of this incident definitely stands out, and the fact that impacted oil rich states and Caracas, the capital, is a big deal.

Nicolas Maduro, the country's leader and successor to the late Hugo Chavez blamed the blackouts on "folly by twisted and desperate minds" of the opposition, on state TV. On Twitter he said that the "extreme right" had returned to continue their plan cripple the country's electrical systems, he warned Venezuelans to be alert.

Of course, according to the BBC, the opposition accuses Maduro of spending billions of state money to run his post-Chavez election campaign while ignoring necessary investment in Venezuela's electricity grid.

Check out a video of what it looked like from EuroNews below: