Puerto Rico, a territory associated with the United States, has been without electricity since Tuesday morning, an outage affecting almost the entire Caribbean island and which is not expected to be completely resolved for at least a day or two. After dark, the capital San Juan remained largely shrouded in darkness. The outage would be linked to an overload on the external station of a high voltage cable in the south which “led to a cascade effect” throughout Puerto Rico, José Pérez, director of external affairs for electricity supplier LUMA, told AFP on Tuesday.
According to him, it will be necessary in total “approximately 48 hours to return to normal“We have started to restore service, several places in the metropolitan area (of San Juan) have power again, particularly the medical center area and the hospitals there,” he said. Power has also returned to the region of the La Plata aqueduct, which supplies Puerto Rico with drinking water, he assured.
The outage began at 5:30 a.m. on the island of around three million people, according to LUMA. As of 7 p.m., nearly 23% of its customers received electricity again in total, according to the company's website. In the San Juan region, that rate was 41 percent.
“No American should be forced to start the new year in the dark. I share the frustration of many Puerto Ricans facing yet another widespread power outage on the island. They deserve betterx”, commented on X the American Minister of Energy Jennifer Granholm. The government of the United States “monitors the breakdown closely“and stands”ready to help” the Puerto Rican authorities, she added.
An island of 3.2 million inhabitants
Located east of Cuba and west of Guadeloupe, the island is home to a total of 3.2 million inhabitants who, due to their special status, hold American nationality but cannot, for example, participate in elections only if they are on United States soil. “We have been facing this problem for a while and rumors have been circulating in recent months that what happened today could happen“, told AFP Ismael Pérez, a resident of Dorado, west of San Juan.
“They say we will be without power for almost three days or more“, he added with a desolate air in a gas station, pointing out the responsibility of the current energy suppliers. Same tone from the side of the governor of the island, Pedro Pierluisi, who says he has been in contact all throughout the day with President Joe Biden and his Minister of Energy.
“We demand answers and solutions, both from LUMA and Genera“, the other electricity supplier, he said on X. “It is a long and arduous process that requires local and federal collaboration“. Almost all production sites were shut down mid-morning but production gradually resumed during the day, according to the Genera website, which allows real-time monitoring.
