Tens of thousands remain without power in Puerto Rico, a week after tropical storm swiped the island
Tens of thousands of customers are still without power across Puerto Rico, a week after Ernesto swiped the U.S. territory as a tropical storm
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — Tens of thousands of customers remained without power across Puerto Rico on Tuesday, a week after Ernesto swiped the U.S. territory as a tropical storm. Authorities pledged to restore electricity to everyone by the weekend.
The National Weather Service issued yet another excessive heat advisory, warning of “dangerously hot and humid conditions.”
More than 40,000 out of nearly 1.5 million customers remained without power in the afternoon. All schools should have electricity by late Tuesday, officials said, and noted that some 80% of emergency medical clinics, which exclude hospitals, have power.
The northeast coastal town of Luquillo, popular with tourists, reported the highest number of outages, with 30% of clients without power. The towns and cities of Fajardo, Río Grande and Yabucoa were also affected.
Juan Saca, president of Luma Energy, a private consortium that oversees the transmission and distribution of power in Puerto Rico, said the company was “working 24 hours a day,” but that alongside the outages blamed on the storm, there’s a deficit in generation.
Up to 70,000 clients could be temporarily left in the dark late Tuesday, and another 90,000 were already hit Monday by a manual reduction in power to Puerto Rico's grid.
“It’s very annoying, I don’t want to minimize that,” Saca told reporters, stressing that those outages are brief.
Luma has come under fire ever since it took over transmission and distribution in June 2021 as Puerto Rico’s Electric Power Authority struggles to restructure more than $9 billion in debt.
Recently, a growing number of
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