Every light in Puerto Rico flickered out Wednesday, April 16, when a massive blackout left 1.4 million homes and businesses without power — the second big failure in months. Utility crews scrambled to fix the grid Thursday, but residents, fed up with constant outages, want change now.
It all crashed at 12:40 p.m., when every power plant on the island shut down, officials said. LUMA Energy, the company running the grid, blamed a bad protection system and overgrown trees hitting a transmission line between Cambalache and Manatí. The glitch spiraled, killing power island-wide.
“This is ridiculous,” said Rosa Delgado, a bakery worker in Carolina. “I lost a whole day’s worth of cakes. Who’s paying for that?”
LUMA got power back to about 600,000 customers by Thursday afternoon, focusing on hospitals like San Juan’s Centro Médico. They’re aiming for 90% restoration by Saturday, but full service might not return until Sunday, the company said. Over 78,000 people also lost water when pumps quit, the water authority added.
“We’re moving as fast as we can,” said Mario Hurtado, a LUMA manager. “It’s a complicated mess, but we’re on it.”
The blackout, hitting just before Easter, follows a New Year’s Eve outage that left most of Puerto Rico dark. The grid, battered by Hurricane Maria in 2017, is a patchwork of old plants and weak lines. LUMA and Genera PR, which handles power plants, face growing heat. Many want their contracts scrapped.
“My kids are sweating, and we’ve got no fridge,” said Juan Mercado, a father in Ponce. “They keep saying they’ll fix it, but it’s the same story.”
Governor Jenniffer González, out of town during the outage, called for a full report from LUMA.
“This can’t keep happening,” she said.
Some, like Mercado, are pushing for her to take stronger action—maybe even firing the companies.
The timing stinks. Tourists packed San Juan for Easter, but dark streets and dead traffic lights caused chaos. Big hotels fired up generators, but small shops took a hit. The airport stayed open, barely. Puerto Rico’s had $17 billion to rebuild the grid since Maria, but outages keep coming.
For now, candles and generators are keeping people going. The bigger fix, though, feels further away than ever.