by Rod Hughes

The Costa Rican Electrical Institute (universally known as ICE, its Spanish acronym) announced today that the  electrical blackouts it had planned for this week to conserve energy have been canceled.

The proposed outages had raised a storm of protest from businessmen who estimated that the unplanned outage last Thursday lasting more than an hour had cost them $10 million in lost trade, according to the daily paper Diario Extra. The unified federation of private chambers also called for a clear explanation for the electrical shortage.

ICE’s statement today explained that the three thermal plants, whose breakdown was blamed for Thursday’s outage, had been repaired and were on line. The thermal plants (diesel-powered generators) were necessary, according to ICE’s statement, because water levels are low at the nation’s major hydroelectric dams, due to an unusually dry rainy season last year, blamed on the phenomenon known as “El Nino.”

Last Thursday’s nationwide blackout starting shortly after 8 p.m. knocked out traffic signals and caused traffic jams. But it was more an inconvenience than disasterous. Hospitals simply started up their emergency generators and it was business as usual. But a bit more alarming was that 911 and Red Cross emergency phone lines were saturated during the whole outage, most callers simply trying to inform authorities that their lights were out.

No crime wave was reported during the Thursday blackout but the paper Diario Extra (which has the reputation for being sensationalistic but often contains human interest news the mainstream papers miss) reported one case of heroism. A bus driver was wounded when he stopped on the highway to pick up a passenger and found himself in the middle of a shootout. Although in pain from the wound, he drove his bus out of danger to the terminal in Alajuela before calling an ambulance to take him to the hospital.

Some areas suffered blackouts on Friday when ICE workmen struggled to remedy the problem. This led to some businessmen complaining that ICE gave no advance warning of the outages.

Under more normal circumstances, ICE actually produces more electricity than is used nationally and sells energy to its hard-pressed northern neghbor, Nicaragua.