Puerto Ricans were left without power on New Year’s Eve after a grid failure left nearly the entire island without power.
About 90 percent of customers were without power Tuesday morning at 9:30 (6:30 PST), according to power distribution company LUMA Energy’s real-time portal.
It will likely take between 24 and 48 hours to turn the lights back on, “conditions permitting,” LUMA said in a statement.
“While the cause of the outage is being investigated, preliminary findings point to a fault in an underground line,” LUMA added.
Iván Báez, spokesperson for power generator Genera, called the grid failure a “major incident” in a local radio interview.
He said the line that is believed to have failed was operated by LUMA and knocked down Genera plants and private generators.
Puerto Rico Governor Pedro Pierluisi said in a social media post that his administration was “demanding answers and solutions” from LUMA and Genera.
He also said companies “need to accelerate the return of generating units to operation… and keep people informed about the measures they are taking to restore service throughout the island.”
Genera’s website showed two plants restarting at 09:30 (6:30 PST) on US soil.
Puerto Rico has long dealt with chronic power outages as its infrastructure crumbles. It was hit hard by Hurricane Maria, a Category 4 storm, in 2017.
