San Juan, Puerto Rico — A massive power outage affected nearly all of Puerto Rico early Tuesday as the U.S. territory prepared to celebrate New Year’s Eve. More than 1.2 million of 1.47 million customers were without power, according to Luma Vitality, a private company that oversees electricity transmission and distribution on the island.
luma said in a statement Early Tuesday, it would likely take 24 to 48 hours to restore power to the entire island, “conditions permitting,” but a couple of hours later it said service had been restored in some areas, without providing an update on the total number of customers affected. .
The company said a medical center and the San Juan Municipal Hospital were back up and running and that it would provide further updates on the restoration of service across the island every two hours.
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“Although the cause of the outage is being investigated, preliminary results point to a fault in an underground line,” Luma said in a previous statement.
As of 3 p.m., about 73,000 customers “are currently in service,” the company said in a statement. social media update. Facilities, including hospitals and water and sewage authorities, are “energized,” Luma said.
Reuters quoted Iván Báez, a spokesman for Puerto Rico’s primary power generator Genera, as saying that the grid failure is believed to have been caused by a problem with a line operated by Luma, but that it also knocked down plants belonging to Genera and some other private electricity generators.
The governor of Puerto Rico, Pedro Pierluisi, said in a post on social media that his administration was communicating with both Luma and Genera “about the massive blackout that affects a large part of the Island due to a critical failure.”
He said that work is being done to restore the electricity supply and that the government “demands answers and solutions from both Luma and Genera, who must accelerate the restart of generating units outside the fault area and keep the population duly informed about the measures.” that they are taking.” to restore service throughout the Island.”
However, in statements to the Telemundo network on Monday night, Josué Colón, head of Puerto Rico’s electric power authority, He said it could take several days. to completely restore service.
Puerto Rico continues to struggle with chronic power outages attributed to a crumbling electrical grid that was devastated by Hurricane Mariaa powerful Category 4 storm that hit the island in September 2017. The system was already in decline before the storm due to years of lack of maintenance and investment.
In a message posted Tuesday on social media, former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, whose state has one of the largest populations of Puerto Ricans in the continental United States, said the territory’s residents had been “treated like second-class citizens.” for too long.” “.
“The fact that, as Americans, we do not have a reliable electrical grid and continually experience sporadic blackouts is indefensible and would not be tolerated anywhere else in the United States.” Cuomo said.. “The federal government must finally recognize its responsibility to Puerto Rico and provide the resources and expertise necessary to end this cycle of madness once and for all.”
