BUENOS AIRES, Argentina -- When the blackout struck, Argentina's famously tender beef spoiled in the summer heat. Ice cream melted, one homeless shelter sent 250 men away for lack of light and even Congress lost power -- electric power, that is.
Elevators stopped working, stranding the elderly and the handicapped in high-rise apartments. Pumps failed and soldiers in fatigues doled out water as temperatures at the end of the Southern Hemisphere's summer climbed each day into the 90s.With Buenos Aires suffering its hottest days of the year, sweaty traffic cops were left to direct the snarl in the streets once traffic lights failed.
But the streets have been anything but quiet these days in Buenos Aires, where pot-banging and tire-burning protests have erupted nightly over the power outage, which entered its second week Monday.
The blackout began Feb. 14 with a mysterious fire at an electrical substation, plunging whole neighborhoods in south and central Buenos Aires into darkness. At the height of the outage, an estimated 300,000 people were left without power.
While some people were away on vacation at beach and mountain resorts, others found their daily lives upended: shopowners fretted as world-famous pampas beef, lobsters and salmon spoiled.
Merchants complained of $750 million in losses while the nation's Congress even had its electric power cut off.
Press reports estimated that 60,000 people were still without electricity Monday, with utility authorities hoping to have full power restored by Wednesday.
Black generator cables snaked up tall apartment buildings and into supermarkets, hair salons and coffee shops Monday.
"This has been torture. We've been going up and down the stairs to get water, and the heat has been terrible," said Olga Rodriguez, unable to work from home on her accounting projects.
"If this were an earthquake I could understand it, but it's just a blackout," complained Juan Angel Acevedo, stricken in both legs by polio as a child. He was stuck in his third-floor apartment all week.
On Monday, Acevedo was relishing his newfound freedom: the 53-year-old real estate agent got out after his building was hooked up to a generator.
"We didn't have an elevator, lights, water or anything. There was no way I could go down 50 steps," said Acevedo, rolling his wheelchair out into afternoon sunshine.
He said he had no power for a fan, nor fresh water to bathe. "I've lived here all my life and never seen a blackout go this long," he said.
Government regulators ordered service restored by midnight Friday but when the deadline passed, government regulators fined the utility Edesur -- Empresa Distribuidora Sur -- $66 million Monday.
The utility's spokesman, at a televised news conference later Monday, said the company was working hard to restore power.
Those comments were too late for many. Residents began protesting Thursday, setting fires outside Edesur branches.
No violence was reported, but one group even heaped lamps, fans, computer keyboards and other appliances on a street, complaining they were no longer useable.
While Edesur detailed plans to patch cables back together, the complaints grew louder.