PANA­MA CITY–The Pana­ma Canal Au­thor­i­ty said Wednes­day it has adopt­ed sev­er­al wa­ter-sav­ing mea­sures to help save en­er­gy as the Cen­tral Amer­i­can coun­try faces a pow­er short­age be­cause of a lack of rain.It said it has sus­pend­ed use of hy­draulic as­sis­tance to help push ships out as they leave locks and it will put two ships in a lock at a time rather than one.

"The pre­ven­tive mea­sures were adopt­ed af­ter weath­er fore­casts in­di­cat­ed that the dry sea­son may ex­tend at least ten days," the au­thor­i­ty said in a state­ment.Pana­ma au­thor­i­ties on Tues­day de­clared a state of emer­gency in some re­gions af­fect­ed by the lack of rain and or­dered sev­er­al en­er­gy-sav­ing mea­sures to avoid sched­uled black­outs.

Of­fi­cials or­dered all pub­lic schools, in­clud­ing uni­ver­si­ties, to close for three days, and told gov­ern­ment of­fices and busi­ness­es to re­duce hours and lim­it air con­di­tion­ing. They al­so or­dered su­per­mar­kets and night­clubs to lim­it their hours and to cut down on the num­ber of il­lu­mi­nat­ed bill­boards turned on at night.

AP