Puerto Rico hit with massive island-wide blackout ahead of Easter weekend

An island-wide blackout hit Puerto Rico on Wednesday as the largely Catholic residents of the U.S. territory prepared to celebrate the Easter weekend, officials said.

All 1.4 million clients on the island were without power, Hugo Sorrentini, spokesman for Luma Energy, which oversees the transmission and distribution of power, told The Associated Press.

“The entire island is without generation,” he said.

Meanwhile, at least 78,000 clients were without water, with officials warning that power likely won’t be fully restored for another 48 to 72 hours.

“This is unacceptable,” said Josué Colón, the island’s so-called energy czar and former executive director of Puerto Rico’s Electric Power Authority.

It was not immediately clear what caused the shutdown, the latest in a string of major blackouts on the island in recent years. 

Gov. Jenniffer González, who was traveling, said officials were “working diligently” to address the outage.

Thousands of Puerto Ricans were fuming over the latest outage, with many renewing their calls that the government cancel the contract with Luma and Genera PR, which oversees generation of power on the island.

Dozens of people were forced to walk next to the rails of the rapid transit system that serves the capital, San Juan, while scores of businesses including the biggest mall in the Caribbean were forced to close.

Professional baseball and basketball games were cancelled as the hum of generators and smell of smoke filled the air.

Traffic became snarled as police officers were deployed to busy intersections.

By late Wednesday afternoon, some 5,000 to 7,000 clients had their power restored, although that number is expected to fluctuate.

Those without generators crowded around grocery stores and other businesses to buy ice.

Daniel Hernández, vice president of operations at Genera PR, said at a news conference that a disturbance hit the transmission system shortly after noon, during a time when the grid is vulnerable because there are not many machines regulating frequency at that hour.

Verónica Ferraiuoli, acting governor and secretary of state for Puerto Rico, said the White House reached out to local officials and have said they are available if needed.

The last island-wide blackout occurred on New Year’s Eve.

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.