Puerto Rico was plunged into darkness after a power grid failure it caused darkness on the island.
The crash happened early Tuesday, the 2024 deadline.
Although power outages are rare on the island, power outages much has been constant in the years since Hurricane Maria destroyed the power grid in 2017.
The governor of Puerto Rico, Pedro Pierluisi, wanted to assure the island of 3.2 million people that electricity would be restored soon. He attributed the “major damage” to the “major failure” in the power grid.
“We can inform you that work has already begun to restore operations with the San Juan and Palo Seco plants. We need answers and solutions,” he said. he wrote on social media.
The New Year's blackout cut power to about 1.27 million households, out of 1.5 million customers, according to the electricity company LUMA, which is responsible for maintaining the electricity grid.
By 11:45am local time (15:45 GMT), BITE report that only 13.5 percent of its customers had access to power.
The company explained in a social media statement that the source of the fire was initially thought to be “a fault in the bottom line”. This brought the entire island to a standstill around 5:30am local time (9:30 GMT).
“The cause of the error is being investigated,” LUMA he wrote in his post.
“We have already started the restoration for some customers, and everything will take between 24 and 48 hours, depending on the situation.”
Puerto Rico's powerhouse has haunted its residents for years, even inspiring a Bad Bunny actor to write an ode to the island called El Apagón or The Blackout.
The Puerto Rican singer has been a vocal critic of LUMA, a partnership between Canada and the United States.
Bad Bunny, whose real name is Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, also turned off New Year's Eve on his Instagram Stories: “This is how you spend New Year's Eve in Puerto Rico, without electricity. Normal.”
LUMA took over the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA), the state-run electricity provider, in 2020 after the latter filed for bankruptcy.
But LUMA itself has faced several protests, and concerns have arisen the cost of his services it is a type of company-government partnership. Some say his words are skewed in favor of LUMA, with less protection for everyday Puerto Ricans.
Governor-elect Jenniffer González Colón, who is expected to replace Pierluisi on January 2, has said that he will decide to appoint a “king of power” to see what LUMA has done and consider other sponsors.
Puerto Rico's power grid problems came to a head in 2017, when Hurricane Maria, a powerful Category 4 hurricane, made landfall on the island.
It wasn't just the most powerful hurricane to hit Puerto Rico, it also knocked out the island's aging power lines, putting people at risk. Power outages have been constant since then.
United States Representative Adriano Espaillat of New York, a Dominican American, considered the legacy of Hurricane Maria when he called for change.
“Ever since Hurricane Maria, Puerto Rico's electricity supply has been expensive, unstable, and unreliable, putting Puerto Ricans at a constant disadvantage,” Espaillat said. he wrote.
The US considers Puerto Rico as an unincorporated territory, and Espaillat appealed to US President Joe Biden. to do more to support the equipment that is being destroyed on the island.
“Even though billions of dollars were given by the Biden Administration to rebuild, most of the money was not used, leaving Puerto Rico to face another year in the dark. It is important to act boldly and quickly so that the problem ends before it is too late,” he said.
But some people who spoke to The Associated Press on Tuesday morning said they would resign because of the ongoing power outage.
“It's part of my daily life,” Enid Núñez, 49, told reporters as she ate breakfast.
He was cooking the food on a gas stove, which he bought especially for such things.