Blackout leaves most of Puerto Rico without power on New Year’s Eve

More than 1 million Puerto Ricans are without power on New Year’s Eve, as a blackout hit nearly the entire island Tuesday morning.

Nearly 90 percent of Puerto Rico’s 1.47 million customers were left in the dark, according to Luma Energy, a private company that oversees electricity transmission and distribution.

Luma said in a statement that the outage appears to have been caused by an underground power line failure, saying it is restoring power “as quickly and safely as possible.”

Still, the company expects it could take several days to restore power.

“We have already begun the restoration process for some customers, and the entire process will take between 24 and 48 hours, conditions permitting,” the company wrote in a statement on social platform X in Spanish

Governor Pedro Pierluisi said he was in contact with both Luma and Genera PR, which handles power generation for the company.

“We are demanding answers and solutions from both LUMA and Genera, which must speed up the restart of generating units outside the fault zone and keep the population properly informed about the measures they are taking to restore service throughout Island,” he wrote.a statement in Spanishto X

Although blackouts are rare in Puerto Rico, the island They struggle with chronic blackouts blame for a crumbling power grid that was ravaged 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 recently began making permanent repairs to Puerto Rico’s power grid after Hurricane Maria. The island continues to rely on generators provided by the US Federal Emergency Management Agency to help stabilize the grid.

Governor-elect Jenniffer González Colón, who is to be sworn in on Jan. 2, has called for the creation of an “energy czar” to review potential contract violations by Luma while another operator is found.

Associated Press contributed.

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