Written by Rich McKay and Ivelisse Rivera
SAN JUAN (Reuters) – Puerto Ricans were without power on New Year's Eve after a grid failure knocked out power to almost the entire island, though power was slowly restored.
About 58% of customers were without power as of 9pm (0100 GMT) on Tuesday, down from 90% earlier in the day, according to the website of power distribution company LUMA Energy. Puerto Rico has long suffered from chronic power outages as its infrastructure collapses.
LUMA said in a statement that it will likely take 24 to 48 hours to get the lights back on. She later added that electricity had been restored to some vital facilities, including Centro Medico and the municipal hospital in San Juan.
“While the cause of the outage is under investigation, preliminary results indicate an underground line failure,” LUMA said.
Ivan Baez, spokesman for Genera Power Generation, said in a local radio interview that the line believed to have failed was operated by LUMA and led to the destruction of plants belonging to Genera, as well as private generators.
LUMA did not answer direct questions about liability for power lines.
Puerto Rico Governor Pedro Pierluisi said in a social media post that LUMA and Genera “need to accelerate the restart of generator units… and keep people informed of the measures they are taking to restore service to the entire island.”
“More than a decade in the making”
New Year's Eve is traditionally a time for family reunions, opening bottles of champagne and watching fireworks, said Ramon Luis Nieves, 49, a San Juan lawyer and former senator on the island. He added that power outages may disrupt celebrations this year.
“My wife and I need to know this,” he said. “We can't visit my wife's family in the dark.”
He added that he is not surprised by the outages, especially after Hurricane Maria, a Category 4 storm that hit the island hard in 2017.
Nieves has long been a critic of power grid operators.
“This disaster has been more than a decade in the making,” he said. “The (electricity) generators are old, long past their useful life and operators have failed to invest properly for years.”
Such sentiments are common on the Caribbean island, a US territory whose residents are US citizens but have no voting representation in Congress and cannot vote in presidential elections. The demonstrators called on the island's government to cancel its contract with LUMA.
In response to the 2022 protest, LUMA said it had “inherited an electrical system that had suffered years, in fact decades, of abandonment.”
Steven Pacheco, a 55-year-old former lineman in the area, was visiting the area for the holidays from St. Petersburg, Florida.
He said it's frustrating that everyone is “constantly on edge, expecting these emergencies to happen again.”
Jennifer Gonzalez, who takes office as governor of Puerto Rico on Thursday, said on social media that she was forming an energy task force to address recurring power outages.
“We cannot continue with an energy system that too often fails our people,” she wrote. “Events like this morning’s power outages and the uncertainty of quickly restoring power to the island continue to impact our economy and quality of life.”
(Reporting by Evelice Rivera in San Juan, Kayleigh Maddrey in Asheville, North Carolina, and Rich McKay in Atlanta; Editing by Alistair Bell, Aurora Ellis and Neil Volek)
