A blackout darkened almost all of Puerto Rico early Tuesday morning as the U.S. territory prepared for New Year’s celebrations.
The loss of power means more than 1.2 million out of 1.47 million clients on the island are in the dark with baffled local officials saying it could take up to two days to restore power.
AP reports the devastating mass outage hit at dawn, plunging Puerto Rico into an eerie silence as electrical appliances and air conditioners shut down before those who could afford generators quickly turned them on.
“It had to be on the 31st of December!” exclaimed one man quoted by the outlet, who only gave his name as Manuel, as he stood outside a grocery store in the capital of San Juan, grumbling about the outage that coincided with his birthday. “There is no happiness.”
A public transport bus drives on a dark street in San Juan, Puerto Rico after a major power outage hit the island on December 31, 2024. (RICARDO ARDUENGO/AFP via Getty Images)
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, saying it is restoring power “in the quickest and safest way possible.” A Luma spokesman told AP the incident remains under investigation.
Puerto Rico Governor Pedro Pierluisi said in a post on social media that his administration was communicating with both LUMA and Genera “regarding the massive blackout affecting a large part of the Island due to a critical fault.”
AP notes while 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 back in September 2017.
At the same time Puerto Rico’s Electric Power Authority struggles to restructure more than $9 billion in debt, the largest of the island’s government agencies.
The island’s struggle with a near-total blackout comes after it joined the 50 states and Washington, DC. in August 2022 to submit plans to the Biden administration to help build a nationwide electric vehicle charging network linked to the national grid