(Reuters) – Puerto Ricans were left without electricity on New Year’s Eve after a power grid failure left nearly the entire island without power.
About 90% of consumers were without power at 9:30 a.m. local time on Tuesday, according to energy distributor LUMA Energy’s real-time portal.
It will likely take 24 to 48 hours for the lights to be turned back on, “conditions permitting,” LUMA said in a statement.
“Although the cause of the outage is being investigated, preliminary results point to a fault in an underground line,” LUMA added.
Ivan Baez, spokesman for power generator Genera, classified the network failure as a “serious incident” in an interview with local radio.
He said the line believed to have failed was operated by LUMA and knocked out power plants owned by Genera as well as private generators.
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Puerto Rico Governor Pedro Pierluisi said in a social media post that the government was “demanding answers and solutions” from LUMA and Genera.
Puerto Rico has long dealt with chronic power outages due to the collapse of its infrastructure. The island was hit hard by Hurricane Maria, a Category 4 storm, in 2017.
