Power outage strikes all of Puerto Rico
It’s the second major blackout in less than a week for the island, which is still hurting from Hurricane Maria.
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — An island-wide blackout hit Puerto Rico on Wednesday as the U.S. territory struggles to repair an increasingly unstable power grid nearly seven months after Hurricane Maria. Officials said an excavator accidentally downed a transmission line.
Officials said it could take 24 to 36 hours to fully restore power to more than 1.4 million customers as outrage grew across the island. It is the second major outage in less than a week, with the previous one affecting about 840,000 customers.
“This is too much,” said Luis Oscar Rivera, a 42-yearold computer technician who just got power back at his house less than two months ago. “It’s like the first day of Maria all over again.”
Several large power outages have hit Puerto Rico in recent months, but Wednesday was the first time since the Category 4 storm struck on Sept. 20 that it experienced an island-wide blackout.
It snarled traffic, interrupted classes and work, and forced dozens of businesses to temporarily close, including the island’s largest mall and popular tourist attractions like a 16th century fort in the historic part of San Juan, Puerto Rico’s capital.
Generators roared to life at the island’s largest public hospital and at its main international airport, where officials reported no cancellations or delays.
Officials said restoring power to hospitals, airports, banking centers and water pumping systems was their priority. Following that would be businesses and homes.
Carmen Yulin Cruz, mayor of San Juan, said the outage would not interrupt the last of a two-game series between the Cleveland Indians and Minnesota Twins.
She said all emergency systems at Hiram Bithorn Stadium were functioning and that tower lights and additional security would be placed in the stadium’s parking lot.
Justo Gonzalez, a power company official, told reporters that a private contractor removing a collapsed tower during unrelated power restoration efforts near the south coast hit the transmission line Wednesday with an excavator.
“We are working in areas that are quite crowded with high voltage lines,” he said.
It is the second such incident in less than a week. Last Thursday, a tree fell on a power line as the same private contractor cleared land in central Puerto Rico, leading to a widespread power outage.
A backup line that was supposed to prevent that outage failed.
Fredyson Martinez, vice president of a union that represents power company workers in Puerto Rico, said he was concerned about the back-to-back incidents.
“That is not normal,” he said.
Government officials said that a company hired by Cobra Energy known as Dgrimm was involved in both incidents that led to the power outages. Dgrimm had been asked to change its security protocols after the first incident, and it has since been terminated, said William Rios, power generation director.
“This is unacceptable for us,” he said, adding that government attorneys were meeting with officials at Cobra Energy, a Mammoth Energy subsidiary hired by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to help with power restoration efforts.