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Puerto Rico was in the dark early Tuesday morning with blackouts across the island.
The cause of the power outage is being investigated, but findings point to a fault in the underground line, according to Luma Energy, which distributes electricity to the island. Full recovery can take between 24-48 hours, the company said on X.
Only 13 percent of the island’s 1.4 million customers had power at about 1000AST (1400GMT), according to the New York Times.
An hour later, power was restored to other areas, including San Juan Hospital, Luma said.
The New Year’s Eve blackout led to repeated calls from officials and residents to deal with the ongoing power outages in the U.S., which have been ongoing since Hurricane Maria in 2017.
The island cannot continue to withstand the forces that often hinder its citizens, Jenniffer González-Colon, the current representative of the US in Puerto Rico and the incoming ambassador to Puerto Rico, wrote on X.
The damage continues to affect Puerto Rico’s economy and quality of life, he said.
On Facebook, the current governor, Pedro Pierluisi, sought answers and answers from the main energy companies, Luma and Genera.
Hundreds of thousands of people have been affected by blackouts this year. The June outage left about 350,000 customers without power as temperatures soared, and more than 700,000 customers lost power after Hurricane Ernesto in August.
When they woke up one day without power, the people of Puerto Rico were upset by the US media.
“It’s part of my daily life,” Enid Núñez, 49, said of the loss to the Associated Press.
Puerto Rico’s power supply was disrupted even before Hurricane Maria devastated the island. US government funding helped expand the grid, support disaster recovery efforts, and repair critical infrastructure.
But the implementation was not completed due to various factors, such as the issues of starting construction and the requirements of the Federal Emergency Management Agency to approve the use of other funds, according to February 2024. report from the US Government Accountability Office.
“There is no doubt that the electricity grid has not yet recovered from the damage caused by Hurricane Maria,” Mark Levine, President of New York City in Manhattan, wrote on X.
New York City is home to the largest Puerto Rican population in the US.
“These are 3.5M American citizens,” he wrote. “We owe them the best.”
