A blackout struck nearly all of Puerto Rico early on Tuesday, December 31, 2024, as the U.S. territory geared up to celebrate New Year’s Eve.
According to Luma Energy, a private company responsible for electricity transmission and distribution on the island, more than 1.2 million out of 1.47 million clients were left without power.
The cause of the widespread outage and the estimated time for power restoration were not immediately known. Luma officials have not responded to requests for comment.
In a statement on X, Luma mentioned that they were coordinating with crews and power generation companies in Puerto Rico to address the outage and promised to provide updates soon.
Efforts to reach a spokesperson for Genera PR, the entity in charge of power generation, were unsuccessful at the time of reporting.
Puerto Rico has been dealing with frequent power outages attributed to an aging and damaged power grid that was severely impacted by Hurricane Maria, a category 4 hurricane that hit the island in September 2017.
The power system was already in a state of disrepair prior to the hurricane due to years of neglect and insufficient investment.
Published – December 31, 2024 06:27 pm IST
