Death toll from Spanish blackout climbs to five
Three members of the same family died in Spain due to a faulty generator
A sudden and widespread power blackout which brought Spain and Portugal to a grinding halt on Monday April 28 has taken an even more sinister turn as it’s emerged that at least five people lost their lives as a direct result of the electricity failure.
The authorities are still scrambling to figure out the cause of the massive outage, which left every home in the country without electricity, internet and mobile phone coverage for several hours.
In the small Galician town of Taboadela (Ourense), three members of the same family—an elderly couple and their disabled son—tragically lost their lives after inhaling toxic carbon monoxide fumes from a generator they had switched on to power a vital medical device. The authorities believe the exhaust from the generator, which was running in the basement, quickly filled the home with deadly gas. The father, 81-year-old FDR, was well-known in the village as a former justice of the peace and needed a respirator daily due to a serious illness.
Two other family tragedies have been linked to the blackout. In Alzira in Valencia, a 46-year-old woman dependent on an electric oxygen machine died after the device shut down when the power failed. Police and paramedics fought to save her, performing CPR for nearly half an hour, but their efforts were in vain.
In Madrid’s Carabanchel district, a fire broke out during the blackout, reportedly sparked by a candle that was lit when the street lights went out. A woman was found dead in her home, which had been engulfed in smoke. Thirteen neighbours were treated for smoke inhalation and five had to be hospitalised.
Elsewhere, firefighters in Catalonia responded to at least nine emergency calls related to improper use of fuel-powered generators and two people were hospitalised for carbon monoxide poisoning in the A Coruña town of Rianxo.
Theories abound as to why Spain and Portugal experienced such an unprecedented outage and while Spanish president Pedro Sánchez said the European grid experienced a “strong oscillation”, the ultimate cause is yet to be determined.
Image: Bomberos VLL
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