Gibraltar hit by total power outage after cable damage; emergency services inundated with calls

Gibraltar experienced a total power outage on Tuesday afternoon after damage to electrical cables, officials said, leaving residents without electricity and emergency services overwhelmed with calls for assistance.

The Gibraltar Fire and Rescue Service said its control room was receiving a “substantial number of calls from persons trapped in lifts” and that all appliances were responding across the territory as crews were redeployed to attend numerous incidents. The Gibraltar Electric Authority said engineers were working to restore power and that the outage had been caused by damage from a contractor.

Dozens of people were reported trapped in elevators across the Rock, prompting multiple rescue responses, the fire and rescue service said. The authority provided no immediate timetable for full restoration, saying only that on-site crews were addressing the damage.

A Gibraltar-bound British Airways flight from London Heathrow was diverted to Malaga, Spain, on Tuesday, though the airline had not confirmed whether the diversion was related to the outage. Transport disruptions were reported locally as the loss of electricity affected lifts, some communications and day-to-day services.

Gibraltar, a British Overseas Territory at the southern tip of Spain, was also affected earlier this year during a sweeping Iberian blackout in April that disrupted businesses, hospitals, transit systems and cellular networks across much of Spain and Portugal. That outage forced emergency evacuations from trains and left millions temporarily without power.

Spain’s government said in a June report that the April blackout had been caused by a miscalculation by the grid operator Redeia in the energy mix and by some conventional thermal plants failing to maintain appropriate voltage levels, which triggered a cascade of disconnections. Gibraltar authorities did not link the current cable damage to that earlier grid event.

Local officials urged residents to remain calm and follow guidance from emergency services while crews worked to repair the damaged cables. The Gibraltar Electric Authority said it would provide updates as repairs progressed. The fire and rescue service continued to field calls and redeploy crews to assist people affected by the outage.

Further details were expected as engineers assessed the full extent of the damage and as authorities released additional information on repairs and any broader impacts to critical services.