General
Hurricane Ernesto Knocks Out Power to Hundreds of Thousands in Puerto Rico
The island’s frail electrical system struggled as the storm passed on Wednesday.
Hurricane Ernesto left hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans without power on Wednesday after its wind and rain pelted the island’s frail electrical system.
More than 720,000 customers had lost electricity as of 12:20 p.m., Luma Energy, the power utility, reported. That amounted to almost half of the nearly 1.5 million customers the utility serves. Entire towns in eastern Puerto Rico were without power, several mayors said.
Juan Saca, Luma’s president and chief executive, said in a news briefing that crews were out assessing whether power lines had been knocked out — which would require lengthier repairs — or had been brushed by vegetation. A bump from a tree or branch would have automatically shut down the line for safety, Mr. Saca said, but would make it easier to restore power.
“We are already in the streets bringing the grid back up,” he said, though the number of customers without power kept climbing.
Alejandro González, Luma’s director of operations, said the utility was waiting for weather conditions to improve to send two helicopters to fly over the grid and assess the damage. By Wednesday afternoon, the center of the storm had moved past Puerto Rico but rain bands were still lashing the island.
The Luma executives said it was too early to say when power might be restored.
Power outages “affect the quality of life, and affect what we can do in many areas” to return to normal after the storm, Gov. Pedro R. Pierluisi said.
In 2017, Hurricane Maria knocked out electricity across all of Puerto Rico, exposing the vulnerabilities of the island’s antiquated and inefficient power grid. Some people did not get their electricity back for more than a year.
The grid has been plagued by aging equipment, lack of maintenance and past mismanagement and corruption. Luma, a private Canadian-American consortium, took over the transmission and distribution of power in 2021. The bankrupt public utility, the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, known as PREPA, remains in charge of power generation. Ernesto did not damage any of the power plants, a PREPA representative said.
Puerto Ricans pay about 40 percent more for electricity than the average U.S. customer, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Ernesto became a hurricane on Wednesday just north of Puerto Rico after strengthening in the Caribbean. The storm is expected to strengthen further as it approaches Bermuda by this weekend, according to forecasters.
