On March 7, Venezuela was affected by the first in a series of concurrent, nation-wide blackouts. The first large outage was partially resolved by March 14, but smaller outages persisted in some regions for days afterwards, and a second multi-day outage began on March 25. During the month of March, Venezuela was without power for at least 10 days overall. The blackouts stemmed from the failure of Simón Bolívar Hydroelectric Plant (Guri Dam) in the state of Bolívar, and left most of the country of nearly 32 million in darkness. By March 12, power began returning to some parts of the country, but Caracas remained only partially powered and western Venezuela remained dark. Government officials claimed the blackout was "an act of sabotage," while experts attributed the failure to aging infrastructure and insufficient maintenance. At least 43 deaths were attributed to the initial wave of blackouts. The last reported nationwide blackout for Venezuela in 2019 occurred on July 22, but was resolved the following day, back power restored on December 31 last year in late 2019.