There was no power in Puerto Rico on New Year’s Eve due to a grid failure that left almost the entire island without power.
About 87 percent of customers were without power at 1 p.m. Tuesday, according to a statement from energy distribution company LUMA Energy. Puerto Rico has suffered from chronic power outages as its infrastructure has collapsed.
It will take 24 to 48 hours for the lights to be turned back on, LUMA said in a statement. It later said power had been restored to some critical facilities in San Juan, including the Centro Medico and the Municipal Hospital.
“Although the cause of the outage is being investigated, preliminary findings point to a failure in the underground line,” LUMA said.
Ivan Baez, a spokesman for power generator Genera, said in a local radio interview that the line was believed to have failed, which was operated by LUMA and had destroyed plants belonging to Genera as well as private generators. .
LUMA did not respond to direct questions about responsibility for the power lines.
Puerto Rico Governor Pedro Pierluisi said in a post on social media that LUMA and Genera “need to accelerate bringing generator units back online… and inform people about the measures they are taking across the island.” But we are raising it to bring the service back.” ,
‘More than a decade in the making’
Ramon Luis Nieves, 49, a lawyer in San Juan, said New Year’s Eve is usually a time for family reunions, popping champagne bottles and watching fireworks. He said power cuts could dampen the celebrations this year.
“My wife and I need to figure this out,” he said. “We can’t go visit my wife’s family in the dark.”
He said he was not surprised by the outage, especially after Hurricane Maria, a Category 4 storm that hit the island in 2017.
Nieves, the island’s former senator, has long been critical of the operators of the power grid.
“This disaster has been more than a decade in the making,” he said. “The (electricity) generators are old, their life expectancy is very long and operators have failed to make appropriate investments over the years.”
Such sentiment is common on the Caribbean island, a U.S. territory whose residents are U.S. citizens but do not have voting representation in Congress and cannot vote in presidential elections. Protesters have called on the island’s government to cancel its contract with LUMA.
In response to the 2022 protests, LUMA said it had “inherited an electricity system that suffered years, indeed decades, of abandonment.”
Former area lineman Steven Pacheco, 55, was visiting from St. Petersburg, Florida, for the holidays.
He said it is frustrating for everyone to “constantly live on edge and fear that these emergencies could happen again.”
Jennifer Gonzalez, who took over as governor of Puerto Rico on Thursday, said on social media that she was forming an energy task force to deal with frequent blackouts.
“We cannot continue to have an energy system that fails our people again and again,” he wrote. “Events like this morning’s blackout and the uncertainty over the speedy restoration of power to the island are impacting our economy and quality of life.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
