Puerto Rico has been immersed in darkness after a power grid failure sparked a blackout throughout a lot of the island.
The outage occurred within the early hours of Tuesday, the final day of 2024.
Whereas full blackouts are comparatively uncommon on the island, power outages typically have turn into a daily prevalence within the years since Hurricane Maria devastated {the electrical} grid in 2017.
Puerto Rico’s governor, Pedro Pierluisi, sought to reassure the island of three.2 million residents that electrical energy can be restored quickly. He credited the “huge blackout” to a “crucial failure” within the energy grid.
“We are able to inform you that work is already underway to revive the service with the San Juan and Palo Seco vegetation. We’re demanding solutions and options,” he wrote on social media.
The New 12 months’s Eve blackout minimize energy to just about 1.27 million households, out of a complete of 1.5 million purchasers, in response to the personal vitality firm LUMA, which is liable for sustaining the electrical energy grid.
As of 11:45am native time (15:45 GMT), LUMA reported that solely 13.5 p.c of its purchasers had entry to energy.
The corporate defined in a social media submit that the supply of the blackout initially gave the impression to be “a fault on an underground line”. That, in flip, sparked an island-wide outage at round 5:30am native time (9:30 GMT).
“The reason for the fault stays below investigation,” LUMA wrote in its submit.
“We have now already begun the restoration course of for some prospects, and the complete course of will take between 24 and 48 hours, situations allowing.”
Puerto Rico’s vitality grid has been the supply of frustration for residents for years, even inspiring the pop star Unhealthy Bunny to jot down an ode to the island referred to as El Apagón or The Blackout.
The Puerto Rican musician has been an outspoken critic of LUMA, a three way partnership held by Canadian and United States firms.
Unhealthy Bunny, whose actual identify is Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, additionally weighed in on the New 12 months’s Eve blackout on his Instagram Tales: “That is the way you spend New 12 months’s Eve in Puerto Rico, with out electrical energy. Regular.”
LUMA took over for the Puerto Rico Electrical Energy Authority (PREPA), a government-run energy supplier, in 2020 after the latter filed for chapter.
However LUMA itself has confronted a number of protests, with issues raised over the cost of its services and the character of the corporate’s contract with the federal government. Some say its phrases are tilted in favour of LUMA, with few protections for on a regular basis Puerto Ricans.
Governor-elect Jenniffer González Colón, who is about to succeed Pierluisi on January 2, has indicated she’s going to think about appointing an “vitality czar” to overview LUMA’s actions and think about different vitality suppliers.
The disaster with Puerto Rico’s energy grid hit a breaking level in 2017, when Hurricane Maria, a strong Class 4 storm, crashed into the island.
Not solely was it the deadliest storm to hit Puerto Rico, however it additionally demolished the island’s ageing electrical grid, creating additional life-threatening situations. Energy outages have been persistent in its aftermath.
US Consultant Adriano Espaillat of New York, a Dominican American, weighed in on the legacy of Hurricane Maria as he referred to as for reform.
“Because the devastating Hurricane Maria, Puerto Rico’s vitality grid has remained expensive, unstable, and unreliable, failing the Puerto Rican folks at each flip,” Espaillat wrote.
The US considers Puerto Rico an unincorporated territory, and Espaillat referred to as on outgoing US President Joe Biden to do more to prop up the island’s ailing infrastructure.
“Regardless of billions of {dollars} allotted by the Biden Administration to rebuild, a lot of the funding stays unutilized, leaving Puerto Rico to face one other yr in darkness. Daring and speedy motion is required to deal with this disaster earlier than it’s too late,” he stated.
However some residents who spoke to The Related Press on Tuesday morning expressed resignation concerning the ongoing energy outages.
“They’re a part of my on a regular basis life,” Enid Núñez, 49, advised the information company as she ate breakfast.
She had cooked the meal on a fuel range, purchased particularly for such conditions.
