UPDATE
Jan 1, 2025 4:10 PM CST
By Wednesday afternoon, 98% of Puerto Rico's 1.47 million utility customers had their power restored after a blackout that began Tuesday morning. Electricity was again flowing to hospitals, water plants, and sewage facilities—as well as homes—in the US territory, reported Luma Energy, per the AP. The private company cautioned that temporary outages could persist in the coming days and that full restoration could take two days. The cause of the outage was not yet pinned down, officials said.
Dec 31, 2024 10:10 AM CST
A blackout hit nearly all of Puerto Rico early Tuesday as the US territory prepared to celebrate New Year's Eve. More than 1.2 million out of 1.47 million clients were without power, according to Luma Energy, a private company that oversees electricity transmission and distribution on the island, per the AP. About 90% of the total island lacked electricity as of Tuesday morning, per Reuters.
NBC News notes the issues began around 5:30am local time. As for the cause of the outage, Luma on Friday morning wrote on X that while that's currently "under investigation, preliminary findings point to a fault on an underground line." Luma said it was in touch with crews and companies overseeing the generation of power in Puerto Rico to solve the outage and that power would be restored "in phases," with the full process taking "between 24-48 hours, conditions permitting."
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Luis Munoz Marin International Airport, the island's busiest, is said to be still operational thanks to electrical generators. Puerto Rico continues to struggle with chronic power outages blamed on a crumbling power grid that was razed by Hurricane Maria, a powerful Category 4 storm that struck the island in September 2017. The system was already in decline prior to the storm given years of lack of maintenance and investment. (More Puerto Rico stories.)