(The Hill) – More than 1 million Puerto Ricans are without power on New Year’s Eve as a blackout hit nearly all of the island early Tuesday morning.
Nearly 90 percent of 1.47 million clients across Puerto Rico were left in the dark, according to Luma Energy, a private company that oversees electricity transmission and distribution.
Luma said in a statement that it appears the outage was caused by a failure of an underground power line, and that the company is restoring power “in the quickest and safest way possible.”
Still, the company expects it could take multiple days to restore power.
“We have already begun the process of restoring some customers, and the entire process will take between 24 and 48 hours, conditions permitting,” Luma Energy wrote in a statement on the social platform X in Spanish.
Gov. Pedro Pierluisi said he was in touch with both Luma and Genera PR, which handles power generation for the company.
“We are demanding answers and solutions from both LUMA and Genera, who must expedite the restart of the generating units outside the fault area and keep the people duly informed about the measures they are taking to restore service throughout the Island,” he wrote, per a translated statement on X.
Although blackouts are rare in Puerto Rico, the island struggles with chronic power outages blamed on a crumbling power grid that was razed by Hurricane Maria, a Category 4 storm in September 2017. The system, however, was already in decline after years of lack of maintenance and investment.
Crews only recently started making permanent repairs to Puerto Rico’s power grid following Hurricane Maria. The island continues to depend on generators provided by the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency to help stabilize the grid.
Governor-elect Jenniffer González Colón, who is set to be sworn in on Jan. 2, has called for the creation of an “energy czar” to review potential Luma contractual breaches while another operator is found.
The Associated Press contributed.
