Blackout in Puerto Rico leaves most of the island without power 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, a power company spokesman said.

All hospitals the island are operating on generators after the power went out at 12:38 p.m. Eastern Time, Veronica Ferraiuoli, acting governor and secretary of state for Puerto Rico, said at a news conference. The source of the outage was in the southern part of the island where a transmission line was affected, according to Josué Colón, executive director of Puerto Rico’s Electric Power Authority.

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.

Restoring the power will likely take through Thursday, or at least 48 hours, Colón said. At least 78,000 customers were also without water, according to the Puerto Rico Aqueduct and Sewer Authority.

It was not immediately clear what caused the shutdown, the latest in a string of major blackouts on the island in recent years. The last major blackout occurred less than five months ago on New Year’s Eve. Gov. Jenniffer González, who was traveling, said officials were “working diligently” to address the outage. Ferraiuoli said the governor is trying to return as soon as possible.

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.

Puerto Rican artist Bad Bunny said in Spanish on X, “when are we going to do something?,” apparently referring to the outage.

“This is a total disaster,” said Orlando Huertas, 68, as he sipped a drink with a friend at a streetside bar and criticized the government for not doing enough to tackle the chronic outages.

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.

“Following today’s island-wide power outage, our administration is actively engaged in ongoing communication with the White House and all relevant federal agencies,” the Puerto Rico Federal Affairs Administration said in a statement. “We are working closely with the federal government to ensure that Puerto Rico receives the necessary support and that all essential services are restored as quickly and safely as possible.”

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.

“I’m desperate. My generator is broken,” said Carmen Suriel, who worried about the impact of the blackout on her two children, a six-month-old and a five-year-old with Down syndrome, as the temperature rose across Puerto Rico on Wednesday.

Alma Ramírez, 69, said she was frustrated with the constant outages, some of which had already damaged her TV and microwave, forcing her to buy new appliances.

“They have to improve,” she said of the government. “Those who are affected are us, the poor.”

The island of 3.2 million residents has a more than 40% poverty rate, and not everyone can afford solar panels or generators. While there was a push to use more renewable energy sources under the administration of former U.S. President Joe Biden, which provided Puerto Rico with mega generators and other resources, experts worry that won’t happen under U.S. President Donald Trump.

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. As the island was just starting to rebuild, it was hit hard again by Hurricane Fiona in 2022.

The grid already had been deteriorating as a result of decades of a lack of maintenance and investment.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, the Puerto Rico government in 2021 hired Luma, a private Canadian-American company based in San Juan, to handle the transmission and distribution of electricity on the island. Power was previously overseen by the state-owned Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, which went bankrupt in 2017 as the government faced billions of dollars in public debt payments.