Chile’s nationwide power outage halts play at ATP event in Santiago

Play was suspended and later cancelled at the Movistar Chile Open on Tuesday as a nationwide power outage plunged over 90 percent of the South American country into darkness, stranding thousands and knocking cell service offline.

Argentina’s Federico Coria was on center court facing Chile’s Marcelo Tomas Barrios Vera when their match was stopped, as play initially carried on when the tournament switched to its own backup power generators.

According to Sebastian Varela of Clay Tenis, play at the ATP 250 event continued mostly uninterrupted save for glitches in the electronic line calling system and malfunctions to the scoreboard's serve clock.

But as the extent of Chile’s biggest power outage since 2010 became clear, the government declared a state of emergency and imposed a national curfew from 10 p.m. on Tuesday until 6 a.m. on Wednesday.

Read More: Should the Golden Swing switch from clay to hard courts? Tournament directors think so

That meant the last two matches of the day were eventually halted too, as police evacuated the venue at Club Deportivo Universidad Católica. Coria was leading Barrios 6-1 while Francisco Comesana and Felipe Meligeni Alves were paused at 7-6 (0), 1-2, with both matches rescheduled for Wednesday.

“As a tournament, we are aware of the emergency that is developing in the country and the state of constitutional exception decreed by the government that will begin to take effect at 10 pm,” tournament organizers wrote in a statement. “By instruction of the authorities, we suspend the match and evacuate the venue.”

According to CNN, 14 of the country’s 16 regions were impacted by the blackout, which began on Tuesday afternoon and affected some 8 million homes.

By Wednesday, more than 90 percent of residential consumption had been restored, according to Chile's National Electricity Coordinator—who blamed the outage on disruption of a high-voltage backbone transmission line in the country’s north.

Read More: ATP Challenger event in Brazzaville, Congo interrupted by reported gunfire near tournament site

Matches at the ATP 250 event resumed as scheduled too, with Coria and Barrios returning to Court Jaime Fillol and Alves and Comesana concluding their encounter on Court 2 to close out the first round.

No. 2 seed Alejandro Tabilo awaits the winner of Coria and Barrios, while No. 3 seed Sebastian Baez awaits the winner of Alves and Comesana.