Brazil's 2 largest cities hit by massive blackouts

RIO DE JANEIRO – A top Brazilian official says blackouts that darkened Brazil's two largest cities and other areas were caused by the failure of a hydroelectric dam that supplies the nation with 20 percent of its electricity.
Mines and Energy Minister Edison Lobao says authorities do not know why the dam went offline. He says a possible cause was a large storm that hit the area around the dam straddling the Brazil-Paraguay border.
Lobao said Tuesday night that Brazil lost 17,000 megawatts of power. Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo were among the hardest hit cities.

Yahoo News

That is not good. Security is questionable at best, with power out????

cyber warfare, happened a couple of years ago as well, Obama referenced a attack on the outskirts of Rio in a speech and it was just coverd on "60 minutes" last Sunday in a piece about the US vunerablity to cyber attacks I think cyber attacks will be the first salvo fired if there is to be a world war among super super countries

edit for crappy spelling

[edit on 10-11-2009 by jacksmoke]

Too strange. I was upset with the show "60 Minutes" on Sunday. The first story was about how hackers could easily disrupt the U.S. power grid and gave as an example the fact that hackers had disrupted the power grid in two Brazilian cities in the past. I felt then, and feel now, that it was irresponsible of "60 Minutes" to broadcast ways in which a terrorist can cause major damage. Perhaps some groups have already thought of doing such an attack, but certainly not all of them had. And now, just two days after the "60 Minutes" story, once again we have blackouts in two Brazilian cities. I am not suggesting this was in any way terror related, but what a strange coincidence. I'll be curious to see what caused the blackout.