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We just went through a couple of outages in Venezuela. The first one was 5 days, the second one 3 days. After day 2 you start getting worried because everythin

We just went through a couple of outages in Venezuela. The first one was 5 days, the second one 3 days. After day 2 you start getting worried because everything failed, including the water service (they've been badly maintained and they don't generate their own power) and cell phone service. Lots of already scarce food was lost because people had no way to refrigerate it. At least it made for some nice neighborhood cookouts were everyone cooked and shared their food in the street. Getting in touch with my parents in another city was like sending messages in a bottle. I sent an SMS, once a day they moved to one of the few places where there was still cell phone service and replied. Since the main issue that caused the huge outages hasn't been resolved yet, we still get daily power rationing. I'm sitting here in the dark typing, 4 hours so far without power. Hope the situation in Argentina gets resolved quickly!

mensetmanusman 7y ago
That is scary. Our distant family in Venezuela have fled to Chile. Those left behind have died.
- rafaelm 7y ago
  Yeah, it's a scary situation. A couple of days into the outage you start to hear about people looting and you can understand how a situation like that can get out of hand really fast. As a curious note, my sister fled to Bs. Aires a few months ago (along with a the thousands of others that have been leaving), now she's going through this blackout over there.
pif 7y ago
> At least it made for some nice neighborhood cookouts were everyone cooked and shared their food in the street. It's always nice to rediscover human warmth within such tragedies.
martinvol 7y ago
The situation in Argentina was completely different. This was a one time thing that was sorted out in 6 hours and it's very unlikely that will happen again.
soyyo 7y ago
It's very sad that while you are going through all this, in other parts of the world where the situation is far better, the only interest in Venezuela seems to be how they can use it to support their political claims. For instance in Spain, leftist people refuse to acknowledge how bad the situation is because they link Chavez and Maduro with their ideas and somehow think that it would show weakness in their ideology, specially for some politicians that openly praised Chavez. On the other side, right wing people want the situation to be as bad as possible so they can use it as a proof of how harmful the left is for a country. So Venezuela will pop up again and again in political discussions, but the important issue seems to be "my ideology is betters than yours", not helping the people. I really hope it gets better for you.
- rafaelm 7y ago
  Yeah, the situation right now is a political tug of war between the left and the right. The people get stuck in the middle. It really sucks. Thanks for your thoughts.
- ralusek 7y ago
  In the United States it's the same, but the left don't even take it as an example of socialist failures. Instead they attribute the state of Venezuela to having been the consequence of American interventionism. It's actually a tragedy, because the lessons to be learned from the failure of socialism come at the cost of countless lives, the least we could do is come away with something of utility.
  - objectivetruth 7y ago
    In the United States it's the same, but the right doesn't even take it as an example of the failures of oligarchical cronyism. Instead they attribute the state of Venezuela to having been the consequence of socialism. It's actually a tragedy, because the lessons to be learned from the benefits of democratic socialism can save tens of thousands of the lives lost in the US every year to our healthcare financing system [0], the least we could do is come away with something of utility. [0] https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2009/09/new-study-finds-45000-deaths-annually-linked-to-lack-of-health-coverage/ https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2009/09/new-study-fin...

mensetmanusman 7y ago

That is scary. Our distant family in Venezuela have fled to Chile. Those left behind have died.

rafaelm 7y ago
Yeah, it's a scary situation. A couple of days into the outage you start to hear about people looting and you can understand how a situation like that can get out of hand really fast. As a curious note, my sister fled to Bs. Aires a few months ago (along with a the thousands of others that have been leaving), now she's going through this blackout over there.

pif 7y ago

> At least it made for some nice neighborhood cookouts were everyone cooked and shared their food in the street. It's always nice to rediscover human warmth within such tragedies.

martinvol 7y ago

The situation in Argentina was completely different. This was a one time thing that was sorted out in 6 hours and it's very unlikely that will happen again.

soyyo 7y ago

It's very sad that while you are going through all this, in other parts of the world where the situation is far better, the only interest in Venezuela seems to be how they can use it to support their political claims. For instance in Spain, leftist people refuse to acknowledge how bad the situation is because they link Chavez and Maduro with their ideas and somehow think that it would show weakness in their ideology, specially for some politicians that openly praised Chavez. On the other side, right wing people want the situation to be as bad as possible so they can use it as a proof of how harmful the left is for a country. So Venezuela will pop up again and again in political discussions, but the important issue seems to be "my ideology is betters than yours", not helping the people. I really hope it gets better for you.

rafaelm 7y ago
Yeah, the situation right now is a political tug of war between the left and the right. The people get stuck in the middle. It really sucks. Thanks for your thoughts.
ralusek 7y ago
In the United States it's the same, but the left don't even take it as an example of socialist failures. Instead they attribute the state of Venezuela to having been the consequence of American interventionism. It's actually a tragedy, because the lessons to be learned from the failure of socialism come at the cost of countless lives, the least we could do is come away with something of utility.
- objectivetruth 7y ago
  In the United States it's the same, but the right doesn't even take it as an example of the failures of oligarchical cronyism. Instead they attribute the state of Venezuela to having been the consequence of socialism. It's actually a tragedy, because the lessons to be learned from the benefits of democratic socialism can save tens of thousands of the lives lost in the US every year to our healthcare financing system [0], the least we could do is come away with something of utility. [0] https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2009/09/new-study-finds-45000-deaths-annually-linked-to-lack-of-health-coverage/ https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2009/09/new-study-fin...