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...the object threw beams over the turbines and beams could also be seen coming from the turbines to the UFO.

UFO over Argentina is seen beaming a dam moments before a massive blackout

The province of Salta is highlighted in northwestern corrner of Argentina.

The province of Salta is highlighted in northwestern corner of Argentina.

There is a long history of power blackouts linked to UFO sightings, particularly in Latin America, but there is rarely conclusive evidence or first-hand witnesses that can clearly link the two events. Although the investigation is still ongoing, a UFO incident on November 26th in the small city of Joaquin V. Gonzalez in northwestern Argentina, which was followed by a power blackout that affected an area of 200 square Km., appears to be the exception. Here we have a sighting that was seen by several hundred witnesses. A few minutes later, a power blackout hit the whole area.

The case was reported in several Argentine newspapers and websites, but the most thorough investigation so far was published by Mercedes Casas of OVNISALTA (UFOs in Salta), with whom I’ve been in touch via email and telephone. Salta is a province in northern Argentina bordering Bolivia and Chile, where the town of Joaquin V. Gonzalez (population of 20,000) is located in the department (county) of Anta; it’s also the name of the capital of the province. The second key spot in the trajectory of the UFO is the electric power plant, dam and reservoir of El Tunal in the neighboring dept. of Metan, which is where the power outage took place. There is very important testimony of the apparent interaction between the UFO and the turbines just prior to the blackout, which is highly unusual in ufological literature. This Google satellite map shows the trajectory of the UFO, but let’s looks at the facts in a chronological order.

The path the UFO is believed to have taken from JV Ganzalez to the damn near El Tunal.  The resevoir with the damn can be seen in the bottom left hand corner.

The path the UFO took from JV Ganzalez to the dam near El Tunal. The resevoir with the dam can be seen in the bottom left hand corner. (image credit: Google/Mercedes Casas)

The path the UFO is believed to have taken from near Salta to JV Ganzalez and then on to the damn near El Tunal.

Casas reconstruction of the UFO sightings. (image credit: Mercedes Casas)

Argentinian UFO Investigator, Mercedes Casas

Argentinian UFO Investigator, Mercedes Casas.

The incident began shortly after 1 am on Thursday, November 26th. A lot of people were outdoors eating ice cream, drinking soda and otherwise trying to weather out a very hot night on the town of J. V. Gonzalez. Suddenly, according to a report prepared by Antonio Galvagno, a pilot and local UFO expert, a huge, luminous cigar-shaped object appeared in the sky and remained visible for approximately 55 minutes. The UFO was pulsating with red and white flashes and no sound was heard. It then moved in a southwesterly direction toward the electric power plant and dam of El Tunal in the neighboring department of Metan, which is about 35 Km away from the town. At this point, a total power blackout hit the town of J. V. Gonzalez and an area of about 200 square Km. The power outage lasted for about 12 hours and the telephone lines were also dead.

The local power company EDESA (Empresa de Electricidad de Salta) had no immediate explanation for the blackout. On the following day they found a burned out turbine (according to Galvagno it was practically melted) but there was no explanation as to how that happened either, since all the equipment was working fine prior to the incident. Mercedes Casas clarified that this is an agricultural area (mostly devoted to soy bean) with low energy consumption, so power outages are not common.

UFO investigator, Tony Galvano

UFO investigator and pilot, Tony Galvano. (image credit: Mercedes Casas)

In another spot north of J. V. Gonzalez called Las Lajitas, Galvagno reported that a row of five power poles had their tops totally burned out and the cables cut. During her investigation of the case, Mercedes Casas ran into a crew from the power company who were replacing the burned out poles, who agreed to talk so long as their names were not used in her report. Mercedes said “one of the employees told us that they don’t have an explanation for what he saw, five poles in line burned exactly at the same height; lightning can burn one pole, perhaps two, but not five.”

Another interesting detail reported by Galvagno and corroborated by Casas, who has interviewed about 25 witnesses so far, is that during the sighting people felt numb and one teenager even said he felt paralyzed. Cell phones and digital cameras also malfunctioned and that’s why no photos or videos of the UFO have emerged so far. There is one image used in this report and elsewhere on the web that purportedly shows the cigar-shaped object over J. V. Gonzalez, but it’s not clear who took it. Mercedes Casas has been unable to verify it. “I was told that there are three people who have footage, one is a supervisor of the dam, but I haven’t yet been able to find them,” she said in our interview.

An aleged picture of the UFO over JV Gonzalez

An aleged picture of the UFO over JV Gonzalez.

Witness drawing of the UFO.

Witness drawing of the UFO. (image credit: Mercedes Casas)

Second witness drawing of the UFO.

Second witness drawing of the UFO. (image credit: Mercedes Casas)

A cross section of the dam at El Tunal

A cross section of the dam at El Tunal.

Probably the most interesting report obtained by Mercedes came from a bookseller from Tucuman who was fishing with friends on the man-made lake next to the power station when the incident occurred. According to this witness, while they were fishing they suddenly noticed a whitish or yellow light all around them; as they looked up they noticed a huge object hovering over the turbines and emitting a rumbling “mmmmmm” sound. He estimated the UFO had a length of between 200 and 300 meters. He then described how the object threw beams over the turbines and beams could also be seen coming from the turbines to the UFO. The whole operation was accompanied by a sound like that of “several machines working in tandem,” according to the witness. This process lasted a few minutes and then the UFO made a big flash and left the area at great speed. That’s when the power blackout occurred, which seemed to also affect their flashlights and cell phones. When they drove to El Tunal a few minutes later they noticed the whole town was in shock.

El Tunal Dam

El Tunal Dam.

Mercedes mentioned a similar testimony that she obtained while investigating a crop circle case in Chicoana in 2008, which is about 200 Km away from J. V. Gonzalez. “I interviewed some field workers in a tobacco farm and they mentioned that there was an object in October of last year [2008] that was doing the same thing: it emitted beams towards the earth and from the earth there were flames going upwards; there are small dams used by farmers in this area.”

I asked Mercedes if there had been any official reaction to the incident from the police or local authorities. She talked to the local police (Gendarmería) and while some of them had seen the phenomenon, they stated they “had not received any official request to investigate the case nor had they seen any foreigners [in the area] as it often happens when there are physical traces or a crash.” Likewise, the power company EDESA didn’t provide any satisfactory explanation for the blackout and they “didn’t confirm or deny the UFO sighting.”

As a tentative conclusion for the importance of this case, Mercedes said that it fulfilled the first two of three parameters for a valid sighting given by the late Dr. J. Allen Hynek, an astronomer who consulted for the US Air Force’s Project Blue Book, and later founded the Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS) :

1. An object seen by a large number of people not linked with each other.
2. It is observed in different places located at a considerable distance.
3. Seen in daytime.

Silvia Perez Simondini at the UFO Museum (Museo OVNI) in Victoria, Argentina. (image credit: Visión OVNI)

Silvia Perez Simondini at the UFO Museum (Museo OVNI) in Victoria, Argentina. (image credit: Visión OVNI)

The cigar-shaped object returned to Joaquin V. Gonzalez on December 15, reported the local newspaper Diario Popular, but this time in broad daylight. The newspaper quoted Silvia Perez Simondini, director of the UFO group Visión Ovni and founder of the UFO Museum in Victoria, capital of the province of Entre Ríos. “The phenomenon was recorded on Tuesday the 15th [December] at 17:00 hours and was seen by a considerable segment of the population,” said Silvia Perez, adding that “witnesses interviewed by researcher Tony Galvagno stated that what they saw [on this occasion] was identical to the one seen days earlier, but this time without lights.”

Mercedes Casas added a few more details about this last event: “The sighting lasted a shorter time, approximately 5 minutes. I interviewed a kid who described it as an elongated and silvery thing that shined a lot. Mr. Galvagno told me that once again cell phones and [electric] power were cut.” Galvagno is working on a theory linking the UFO sightings around J. V. Gonzalez with climate change and has recruited the assistance of a meteorologist in Buenos Aires. Those who can read Spanish should check the OVNISALTA website here www.ovnisalta.com.ar for Mercedes Casas’ updates on her investigation, otherwise continue to check here at OpenMinds.tv. Undoubtedly, something very strange is going on in the skies over Argentina.

About Antonio Huneeus

Open Minds Investigative Reporter J. Antonio Huneeus has covered the UFO field from an international perspective for over 30 years. His articles have appeared in dozens of publications in the U.S., Latin America, Europe and Japan. He was also the co-author of the Laurance Rockefeller-funded “UFO Briefing Document – The Best Available Evidence” and edited the book “A Study Guide to UFOs, Psychic & Paranormal Phenomena in the USSR.” Huneeus studied French at the Sorbonne University in Paris and Journalism at the University of Chile in Santiago in the 1970s. He has lectured at dozens of UFO Conferences all over the world and been interviewed by many media outlets including The Washington Post, the Sy-Fy and History Channels, Nippon-TV, etc. He received the “Ufologist of the Year” award at the National UFO Conference in Miami Beach in 1990 and the “Courage in Journalism” award at the X-Conference in Gaithersburg, Maryland, in 2007.

7 comments

  1. Patricia Graciela Calo

    Hello friends more and more ufos from the galactic federation will appear
    more frequently until full disclosure of their existance is accomplished.
    This event was supposed to take place in the recent Denmark but it was
    not executed instead two stargates were visible in Norway and Russia .
    Millions of ships will decloack after disclosure not until then.
    In the meanwhile understand that some alien civilizations are not part
    of the Galactic Federation of Light such us the majority of the Grays and
    Reptilians… Landing of the Galactic Federation Ships will take place as soon
    as governments prepare citizens…. this is the biblical event of the second
    coming when MASTER JESUS SANANADA will return with the
    “FLEET OF THE CROSS” and TerraNova will exist like it should one planet
    and all people with advance technology, peace, and freedom.

    Anasai star fleet under commander Ashtar Pleaidean
    of s

  2. Could this be a dry run? Could the (alleged) disableing
    of the ICBM’s in the (conus) be a dry run as well?

  3. What? Federation? These aren’t Ferengis.

  4. where’s the video? The report states that the object was seen for nearly an hour?

  5. This is a small town in a northern province of Argentina. It is a poor town not everyone has digital cameras none the less camcorders. I know because I lived next to it.

  6. Yep, and the Tooth Fairy left a dollar under my pillow last night!

  7. Since June 24th of 1947 when the term “flying saucer” was supposedly first coined by a new scribbler for the Oregonian (actually it is now claimed the first use of that term in reference to unidentifieds was in 1945 by an air force general during a press interview)….we have not advanced one solitary inch in our understanding of this phenomenon and frankly I don’t believe we ever will…for a spell, I thought that the advent of crop formations would be of some help in at least getting a few answers…but no, crop formations do no more than merely add one more enigma on top of the already existing. Frankly, I believe it is just an obscene waste of time even pursuing it any further…whatever THEY are and wherever from: the center of the earth, a hole in somebody’s backyard in West Oakland, a collective psych phenomenon or off some grade B film set…they are playing head games with us and there is no sane use whatsoever in trying to figure it out.

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