Cable Theft Triggers Pre-Dawn Outage Across Parts of Rio

Overview

• Light attributed the interruption to a cable theft recorded at 3:45 a.m. on a transmission line on September 16.
• Power was restored later in the morning after parts of Centro and neighborhoods in the North and South zones went dark.
• Residents reported outages on social media, citing areas such as Tijuca and Grajaú without street lighting before dawn.
• From January to August 28, Light logged 212 cable-theft incidents that vandalized 144.5 kilometers of wiring.
• The company estimates R$13.4 million in losses in 2025 to date, compared with R$9.5 million across 351 cases and about 77,000 meters stolen in all of 2024.