[21:39, 18/2/2024] what a noise you hear! it seems like you’re outside
[21:39, 18/2/2024] I opened the windows
[14:57, 19/2/2024] The power went out fuckkk
[14:59, 19/2/2024] Don’t worry, for now with the cell phone wifi I can bank it
[15:00, 19/2/2024] The cleaning and security guys now have some onda noise canceling headphones, those construction ones
[16:41, 19/2/2024] (the light came back on me)
[21:38, 19/2/2024] There are already seven generating sets. I look at them and say, will they be operating at full capacity? I don’t know if they use all the energy they have to do. And the noise they make? There is something poetic. The noise kills you. When it disappears it gives you relief, but the light goes out
I lived in Caballito for six years, from 2011 to 2017. Great neighborhood. I still miss him. But the successive power outages cut short the idyll and the gas outage that would last for years expelled me. Now I come back often because my boyfriend lives a few blocks from my ex house. And, unintentionally, I found myself once again in the stormy eye from which I fled: the block where an Edesur substation exploded and caught fire.
It was February 10, the Saturday before Carnival. The smoldering mushroom reached the terraces of the entire block and gave an extra smoky touch to the long weekend barbecues. It charred three trucks and left the AySA pumping plant without power. It went from raising fears of the possibility of deaths or injuries – there were none – to foreshadowing the real chance of shutting down the neighborhood for four months. Just last week the fence that interrupted traffic on the block, José María Moreno at 300, was raised, just 400 meters from the heart of the neighborhood that is Acoyte and Rivadavia.
Caballito is the most densely populated neighborhood in Buenos Aires and also the one that grew the most between one census and the next: 203,784 people live here, 15.7% more than in 2010. Increasingly permissive urban regulations allowed free rein in construction matters, which demographics supported but not infrastructure.
The neighborhood that is emblematic of the Buenos Aires middle class continued to grow and became accustomed to being on the verge of collapse, agitated, beyond its capabilities, like that T-shirt that we wear even when it is outgrown, like that game that we continue playing even if a lung is needed. . Blackouts, landslides, man-paced avenues, collapsed parks: the sides of the same coin, that of pulling the rope too hard.
The explosion of the substation itself was imprinted on other chaos. The event triggered a kind of “Get out of there, chivita, chivita”, a chain of actions in which each step depended on completing the previous one. A butterfly effect in a tired neighborhood.
Due to the lack of electricity, 24 Aggreko containers had to be set up in a block and a half. For this, traffic had to be completely cut off on the central avenue of the neighborhood (José María Moreno, continuation of Acoyte), which destroyed the clientele of both the parking lot in front and the free fork next door, whose owners posted signs on the corners to warn that, although it may not seem like it, there is a restaurant a few meters inside.
The cut involved diverting bicycles, cars, motorcycles and four bus lines (25, 42, 135 and 172) for four months. Lines that do what they can to compensate for the lack of transversalization of the Buenos Aires subway, within the limits of an avenue that during rush hour goes at four kilometers per hour thanks to the invasion of vehicles parked after hours and poorly located garbage containers.
All in an area with electrical generators scattered by other power outages (in Beauchef, in Directorio, in Rivadavia itself at the height of the former Village), with traffic interruptions due to works of other services (around the way there are AySA fences) and by more facts that speak of the collapse of the neighborhood, such as the collapse of a PH on Pedro Goyena Avenue, which left two dead two days before the fire.
Ten days after the flames, the roof of the substation imploded to start the civil work, which will continue for the rest of the year. There was already an official explanation for the flames: a leak in an oil filtration machine while repairs were being made to a transformer. Edesur did not stop sending emails to its users with every step it took. And I exchanged the messages that start this column with my boyfriend.
Then the outage notices began to arrive, in tandem: subject “Electrical incident”, subject “Scheduled normalization schedule”, hopefully subject “Electrical incident resolved”. They were interspersed with emails from the administration that reported the complaints to the electricity distributor. The official explanation for the cuts was the work of Edesur “to have the distribution network in the area stabilized.” “It will fluctuate until it normalizes,” the company promised.
But the most concerned or wealthy neighbors went out to buy stabilizers to deal with voltage spikes. Others filled the halls of their buildings to charge their cell phones during the current phase, or to recover a cut work video call. The construction workers also paraded there, to whom some administrators offered bathrooms that were more comfortable than chemical ones on the concrete.
Outside, the perpetual noise of the containers spewing diesel smoke continued. Seven covered the front of the building that I occasionally inhabit, the one next door, and the gym. 14 were counted from the hypermarket to the end of the block. 21 in total in 100 meters, plus three more on the way back, on Alberdi almost Riglos.
Those three-by-six-meter gray masses not only supplied transformers. Some housed mini offices, were involved in the provision of fuel or had an impact on the distribution of energy. The rest of the block was cranes, chemical toilets, New Jersey fences made of yellow and red plastic, and others made of wood painted white with red or orange. Also, motorcycles and bikes on the sidewalk, and cars belonging to the front members entering or leaving.
It was difficult to sleep with the noise. Also have a conversation. There was no electricity for the air conditioning, nor silence to open the window to let air in. Added to the roar of the containers was that of the cylindrical trucks that supplied diesel.
Managers and security and cleaning employees began wearing hearing protection. The administrations sent letters to ask Edesur to redistribute the generators in such a way that “they would not disturb the tranquility and good rest of the neighbors, given that they emit a constant sound or hum and do not allow them to fall asleep during the night.” An elegant way of asking why we do so much and others so little.
But the generators work in groups (they are called Four Packs because they are connected in packs of four or five) and it took time until they were moved. During the time they were in front of the building, they stagnated water against the curb of the sidewalk, in the summer with the most dengue fever in Buenos Aires history.
Finally, the containers were gone: last week the second transformer was commissioned and the substation was fully operational again. “The noise is finally over, right?” I tell the security employee as soon as the generators are taken away. “Yes, but now there is the bus problem,” he answers, dissatisfied.
