The New Year’s Eve blackout prompted repeated calls from elected officials and residents to address the unincorporated U.S. territory’s ongoing power problems that have continued since 2017’s Hurricane Maria.
The island cannot continue to put up with an energy system that so often fails its citizens, Jennifer Gonzalez-Colon, Puerto Rico’s current representative in the US Congress and future governor of Puerto Rico, wrote on X.
Power outages continue to affect Puerto Rico’s economy and quality of life, she said.
On Facebook, current governor Pedro Pierluisi demanded answers and solutions from the two main energy companies, Luma and Genera.
This year, hundreds of thousands of residents were affected by power outages at the same time. An outage in June left about 350,000 customers without power due to rising temperatures, and more than 700,000 customers lost power after Hurricane Ernesto in August.
Waking up to another day without power, Puerto Ricans expressed their frustration to the American media.
“They are part of my daily life,” Enid Nunez, 49, told The Associated Press of the blackouts.
Puerto Rico’s power system was strained even before Hurricane Maria devastated the island. US government funding has helped strengthen the grid, facilitate recovery projects after other natural disasters, and make other critical infrastructure improvements.
But implementation has been incomplete due to various factors, such as problems getting construction started and Federal Emergency Management Agency requirements to authorize some of the funds, as of February 2024. the report , externalfrom the US Government Accountability Office.
“It’s unforgivable that the power grid still hasn’t recovered from the damage from Hurricane Maria,” Mark Levin, president of Manhattan in New York, wrote on X.
New York is home to the largest Puerto Rican community in the US mainland.
“That’s 3.5 million American citizens,” he wrote. “We owe them much better.”
