By Rich McKay and Ivelisse Rivera, Reuters
A car navigates through an intersection without stop lights in San Juan, Puerto Rico after a major power outage hit the island. Photo: RICARDO ARDUENGO/AFP
Puerto Ricans were without electricity on New Year's Eve after a grid failure left nearly all of the island without power.
Around 90 percent of clients were without power at 9.30am Tuesday local time (2.30am Wednesday NZ time), according to energy distribution company LUMA Energy's real-time portal. Puerto Rico has long dealt with chronic power outages as its infrastructure crumbles.
It will likely take 24 to 48 hours to turn the lights back on, "conditions permitting", LUMA said in a statement.
"While the cause of the outage is under investigation, preliminary findings point to a failure in an underground line," LUMA added.
Ivan Baez, a spokesperson for power generator Genera, called the grid failure a "major incident" in a local radio interview. He said that the line believed to have failed was operated by LUMA and brought down plants belonging to Genera as well as private generators.
Puerto Rico Governor Pedro Pierluisi said in a post on social media that his administration was "demanding answers and solutions" from LUMA and Genera.
He also said that the companies "need to speed up bringing back online the generator units... and keep the people informed about the measures they're taking to bring service back to the whole island".
Genera's website showed two plants starting up again at 9.30am.
Ramon Luis Nieves, 49, an attorney in San Juan, said that New Year's Eve is typically a time for family reunions, popping champagne bottles and watching fireworks. The power outage could mute celebrations this year, he said.
"My wife and I need to figure it out," he said. "We can't visit my wife's family in the dark."
He added that he's not surprised by the outage, especially after Hurricane Maria, a Category 4 storm that hit the island hard in 2017.
Nieves, a former senator on the island territory, has long been a critic of operators of the power grid.
"It's the whole island. This disaster has been more than a decade in the making," he said. "The (power) generators are old, long past their life expectancy and the operators have failed to properly invest for years."
Such sentiment is common on the Caribbean island, a US territory whose residents are US citizens but do not have voting representation in Congress and cannot vote in presidential elections. Protesters have called for the island's government to cancel its contract with power grid operator LUMA.
In response to a 2022 protest, LUMA said it had "inherited an electrical system that suffered years, in fact decades, of abandonment".
- Reuters
