Puerto Rico experienced an island-wide blackout on Wednesday as the territory’s predominantly Catholic residents prepared to celebrate Easter weekend, according to a power company spokesman.
All hospitals on the island are running on generators after the power went out at 12:38 p.m. Eastern Time, said Veronica Ferraiuoli, Puerto Rico’s acting governor and secretary of state, at a news conference.
Hugo Sorrentini, spokesman for Luma Energy, which oversees power transmission and distribution, told The Associated Press that all 1.4 million customers on the island were without electricity.
“The entire island is without generation,” he claimed.
Why is Puerto Rico without power?
According to Josué Colón, executive director of Puerto Rico’s Electric Power Authority, the outage was caused by an issue with a transmission line in the island’s south.
Luma said late Wednesday that “a combination of factors” caused the blackout, which is the latest in a string of major outages on the island in recent years, with the last major blackout occurring less than five months ago on New Year’s Eve.
“Preliminary analysis points to a failure in the protection system as the initial trigger, followed by the presence of vegetation on a transmission line between Cambalache and Manatí,” Luma said in a statement. “This sequence of failures triggered a chain of events that resulted in an island-wide outage.”
When will power in Puerto Rico turn back on?
Luma said Wednesday evening that restoring most of the power would take at least 48-72 hours. The Puerto Rico Aqueduct and Sewer Authority reported that at least 78,000 customers were without water.
Governor Jenniffer González, who was traveling, stated that officials were “working diligently” to resolve the outage. Ferraiuoli stated that the governor is attempting to return as soon as possible.
Puerto Ricans react to another outage
Thousands of Puerto Ricans were outraged by the latest outage, with many renewing their calls for the government to cancel the contract with Luma and Genera PR, the island’s power generation company.
Bad Bunny, a Puerto Rican artist, said on X in Spanish, “When are we going to do something?,” presumably in reference to the outage.
“This is a total disaster,” said Orlando Huertas, 68, as he sipped a drink with a friend at a streetside bar, criticizing the government for not doing enough to address the ongoing outages.
Dozens of people were forced to walk alongside the rails of the rapid transit system that serves the capital, San Juan, while scores of businesses, including the Caribbean’s largest mall, were closed. Professional baseball and basketball games were canceled as the sound of generators and smoke filled the air.
“Following today’s island-wide power outage, our administration is actively engaged in ongoing communication with the White House and all relevant federal agencies,” a statement from the Puerto Rico Federal Affairs Administration read. “We are working closely with the federal government to ensure that Puerto Rico receives the necessary support and that all essential services are restored as quickly and safely as possible.”
By late Wednesday afternoon, approximately 5,000 to 7,000 customers had their power restored, though this figure is expected to fluctuate. Those without generators flocked to grocery stores and other businesses to purchase ice.
“I am desperate. “My generator is broken,” said Carmen Suriel, who was concerned about the impact of the blackout on her two children, a six-month-old and a five-year-old with Down syndrome, as temperatures rose across Puerto Rico on Wednesday.
Alma Ramírez, 69, expressed frustration with frequent outages that had damaged her TV and microwave, prompting her to purchase new appliances.
“They have to improve,” she said about the government. “Those who are affected are us, the poor.”
The island of 3.2 million people has a more than 40% poverty rate, and not everyone can afford solar panels or generators. While there was a push to use more renewable energy sources during the administration of former US President Joe Biden, who provided Puerto Rico with mega generators and other resources, experts are concerned that will not happen under President Donald Trump.
Puerto Rico has been plagued by chronic outages since September 2017, when Hurricane Maria devastated the island as a Category 4 storm, destroying a power grid that crews are still working to rebuild. Hurricane Fiona hit the island hard in 2022, just as it was starting to rebuild.
The grid had been deteriorating for decades due to a lack of maintenance and investment.
Following Hurricane Maria, the Puerto Rican government hired Luma, a private Canadian-American company based in San Juan, in 2021 to handle the island’s electricity transmission and distribution. The state-owned Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority previously oversaw power, but it went bankrupt in 2017 due to billions of dollars in public debt payments.