Nearly two days after 1.4 million Puerto Ricans were plunged into darkness, several residents took to X to express their frustration over the power outage that affected the entire island.
Electricity was restored for almost 99 percent of customers Friday morning, according to Luma Energy, which oversees the transmission and distribution of power in the U.S. territory.
Despite the blacklash, the utility company said in a statement that its response ‘was one of the fastest power outage restorations in Puerto Rico’s history.’
Luma Energy warned that some customers would still be left without power for short stretches of times.
‘LUMA’s Emergency Operations Center (LEOC) remains active, and crews continue to work quickly and safely to stabilize the system and complete restoration,’ the provider said. ‘Although restoration is nearly complete, some customers may continue to experience temporary outages due to limited generation.’
The blackout was first reported Wednesday afternoon when a transmission line failed, shutting down multiple generators across the island.
The utility company issued a preliminary report Thursday and attributed the outage to the presence of vegetation near the power lines that run from the northern city of Manatí to Cambalache Power Plant in Arecibo.
The power failure, which left more than 400,000 customers without water, is the second the island has suffered since December 31, 2024.
One resident questioned Luma’s effectiveness and the Puerto Rican government’s response.
‘Well, with so many blackouts, hopefully they’ve learned,’ Roberto Delgado wrote on X. ‘Which gives me another reason to think the government itself is behind this. Another reason to justify using gas instead of renewable energy, which was actually the plan. The government owes it to Generation and Luma.’
Others like Maria Bevilacqua were not as lucky and waiting for electricity to be restored at her home.
‘For the third day in a row, the power just went out! How long? Impossible to live like this!’ she wrote. ‘Luma didn’t come to solve anything. I prefer AEE [Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority]; they charged less and did more.’
‘If LUMA and GENERA aren’t working, and there’s evidence of this, who’s going to replace them?’ John Mudd wrote on the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.
‘It won’t be the Aee because the Junta [Financial Oversight and Management Board for Puerto Rico] won’t allow it. That’s the most important question.’
U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer slammed President Donald Trump for failing to respond to the Caribbean island’s needs.
‘Millions of our fellow citizens in Puerto Rico lost power for the 2nd time in 4 months,’ the New York Democratic lawmaker wrote on X on Thursday.
‘The failing electric grid is a humanitarian crisis Democrats invested hundreds of millions to build more resilient energy infrastructure that would help prevent blackouts – but Trump froze them.’
Nurys Perez, owner of Nurys Salon, styles a client’s hair on the sidewalk outside her shop during a blackout in San Juan, Puerto Rico on Thursday
U.S. Representative Ritchie Torres called on the Army Corps of Engineers to step up and ‘deploy emergency power generation’ on the island.
‘With peak summer demand approaching, immediate action must be taken to avert a full-scale collapse of the island’s fragile and failing electric grid,’ the Democratic politician from The Bronx wrote.
Puerto Rico has encountered an energy crisis since September 20, 2017 when Hurricane Maria devastated the island and destroyed transmission towers, broke power lines and knocked down wooden light poles.
Some residents were left without electricity in their homes for almost a year.
President Trump, who was lambasted for tossing paper towels at residents while visiting a church on the island, was accused adequately addressing the recovery and released $13 billion on September 18, 2020 aimed to rebuild the power grid and repair schools.
Trump, who at the time was gearing up for reelection before losing to President Joe Biden, blamed Democrats for the delay despite their approval and urge for its release.
‘I’m the best thing that ever happened to Puerto Rico, no one even close,’ Trump would say during a press conference to announced the funding.
Governor Jenniffer González, who cut short her Easter week vacation, said a government-conducted report will be released in the upcoming days.
At least 98 percent of the island’s hospitals had electricity on Friday.
All of Puerto Rico’s correctional facilities and airports had full power restored.
Island residents have urged González’s administration to cancel its contracts with Luma Energy as well as Genera PR, which oversees power generation.
‘That is not under doubt or question,’ González said. ‘It is unacceptable that we have failures of this kind.’
González estimated that power outage caused $215 million revenue loss daily.
Josué Colón, who was appointed as the island’s energy czar in January, called on Luma Energy to explain why all of the power generators were shut down when only one should have been placed in protection mode.
Puerto Rico’s unstable power infrastructure may deter investors unless the government provides a solution, according to Ramón C. Barquín III, president of the United Retail Center, a nonprofit that represents small- and medium-sized businesses.
‘We cannot continue to repeat this cycle of blackouts without taking concrete measures to strengthen our energy infrastructure,’ he said.
While Luma attributed the power outage to the presence of vegetation, a space weather physicist previously told DailyMail.com that the loss of power coincided with a G4 geomagnetic storm.
‘This was a complex event comprised by three separate filament eruptions that occurred April 12 through April 13,’ said Dr Tamitha Skov, an independent space weather physicist.
‘Though these filament structures all got sandwiched together into a single solar storm series, they were magnetically oriented in different ways. Only the second filament structure was oriented in such a way to cause sustained storming at Earth.’
However, there is currently no evidence suggesting the solar storm caused Puerto Rico’s blackout.
Last month, Luma Energy announced that it was working on clearing vegetation away from the suspended power cables, which it viewed as the ‘leading causes of service interruptions.’
At the time, the utility company confirmed that workers had trimmed 5,675 of the 6,400 miles of power lines and cleaned 72 of the 190 miles of power lines.
However, Pedro Melendez, an engineer for Luma Energy, was unable to recall the last time technicians address the vegetation problem on the lines that caused the blackout.
‘We’re conducting an investigation,’ he said during a press conference Thursday. ‘An inspection was conducted recently. I don’t have the exact date because we’re focusing on restoring the system.’