Officials demand answers as crews work to restore power after another
Puerto Rico blackout
[April 17, 2025]
By DÁNICA COTO
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Crews worked early Thursday to restore
power to Puerto Rico after a blackout across the entire island that
affected the main international airport, several hospitals and hotels
filled with Easter vacationers
The outage that began past noon Wednesday left 1.4 million customers
without electricity and 328,000 without water. At least 175,000
customers, or 12%, had power back at the end of the day. Officials
expected 90% of customers to have power back within 48 to 72 hours after
the outage.
“This is a shame for the people of Puerto Rico that we have a problem of
this magnitude,” said Gov. Jenniffer González, who cut her weeklong
vacation short and returned to Puerto Rico on Wednesday evening.
The blackout snarled traffic, forced hundreds of businesses to close and
left those unable to afford generators scrambling to buy ice and
candles.
It’s the second islandwide blackout to hit Puerto Rico in less than four
months, with the previous one occurring on New Year’s Eve.
“Why on holidays?” griped José Luis Richardson, who did not have a
generator and kept cool by splashing water on himself every couple of
hours.
The roar of generators and smell of fumes filled the air as a growing
number of Puerto Ricans renewed calls for the government to cancel the
contracts with Luma Energy, which oversees the transmission and
distribution of power, and Genera PR, which oversees generation.
González promised to heed those calls.
“That is not under doubt or question,” she said, but added that it’s not
a quick process. “It is unacceptable that we have failures of this
kind.”
González said a major outage like the one that occurred Wednesday leads
to an estimated $230 million revenue loss daily.
[to top of second column]
|
Headlights illuminate cobblestone streets in Old San Juan, Puerto
Rico, during an island-wide blackout, Wednesday, April 16, 2025. (AP
Photo/Alejandro Granadillo)
Ramón C. Barquín III, president of the United Retail Center, a
nonprofit that represents small- and medium-sized businesses, warned
that ongoing outages would spook potential investors at a time that
Puerto Rico urgently needs economic development.
“We cannot continue to repeat this cycle of blackouts without taking
concrete measures to strengthen our energy infrastructure,” he said.
Many also were concerned about Puerto Rico’s elderly population,
with the mayor of Canóvanas deploying brigades to visit the
bedridden and those who depend on electronic medical equipment.
Meanwhile, the mayor of Vega Alta opened a center to provide power
to those with lifesaving medical equipment.
It was not immediately clear what caused the shutdown, the latest in
a string of major blackouts on the island in recent years.
Daniel Hernández, vice president of operations at Genera PR, said
Wednesday that a disturbance hit the transmission system shortly
after noon, a time when the grid is vulnerable because there are few
machines regulating frequency at that hour.
Puerto Rico has struggled with chronic outages since September 2017
when Hurricane Maria pummeled the island as a powerful Category 4
storm, razing a power grid that crews are still struggling to
rebuild.
The grid already had been deteriorating as a result of decades of a
lack of maintenance and investment.
All contents © copyright 2025 Associated Press. All rights reserved |
