Did the Light Go Out Again in Puerto Rico Today April 18
Puerto Rico Is Once Again Hit by an Islandwide Blackout
SAN JUAN, P.R. — After seven months and close to $2.5 billion, almost everybody in hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico had their lights back on — until a freak accident on Wednesday plunged the entire island in one case once more into darkness.
The Puerto Rico Electric Ability Authority had boasted Wednesday morning that less than 3 percent of its customers remained without ability, substantially last what some estimates called the biggest ability failure in U.s.a. history. The island of three.4 one thousand thousand residents was open for business again, government officials said.
It was simply a few hours later that an excavator working near a fallen 140-foot manual tower on the southern function of the island got besides shut to a high-voltage line. The resulting electrical mistake knocked out power to nearly every domicile and business concern across the storm-battered American territory, authorities said, a catastrophic failure that could have up to 36 hours to restore.
It was the beginning time since Hurricane Maria left the island's ability filigree in ruins on Sept. 20 that near all of the electric company's i.v million customers found themselves in the dark, although another failure less than a week ago had cut power to 870,000 users. Only small pockets generated by microgrids were spared by the latest power loss.
"I'm angry. This is the second time in a row," Justo González, the electric company'due south chief operating officer, said in a telephone interview. "I give the people of Puerto Rico my word: we are going to restore ability to every last house."
Puerto Rican residents, largely resigned to the standing disruptions, did not seem convinced. "It's frustrating," said José Carrillo, 55, whose power was out for three months earlier being restored in November. "You become three months without electricity and you lot think y'all're getting dorsum to normalcy, and this happens again."
The utility company scrambled to restore service to the airport, major hospitals and a stadium hosting a Major League Baseball between the Cleveland Indians and the Minnesota Twins. At the close of business organization on Wednesday, but 51,000 customers had ability again — including the baseball stadium. But past Th morning, the agency said it had returned power to more than 1.1 million of customers.
Traffic was at a standstill on Wednesday as the few operational stoplights went black. Schools, shopping centers and businesses closed. A Chili's eating place went up in flames equally its generator exploded, the fire department said.
Many large hotels in San Juan experienced only a temporary power loss until generators kicked in. The lights flickered and went out for about 30 seconds at the Condado Vanderbilt Hotel, where a news conference was underway to commemorate Roberto Clemente, a Puerto Rico native who played xviii seasons for the Pittsburgh Pirates and died in a plane crash in while delivering assistance to earthquake victims in Nicaragua.
"Welcome to Puerto Rico, this is what nosotros know every bit 'life,'" Eduardo Perez, a sometime Major League baseball histrion and ESPN commentator who was hosting the news conference, told those gathered.
The blackout in one case over again highlighted the delicate nature of Puerto Rico's power filigree, which fifty-fifty afterward more than $2 billion in repairs managed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, has non been steady.
Power has gone out in the San Juan metropolitan expanse at least four times since the storm, forcing Puerto Ricans to spend thousands of dollars to fuel generators. Many residents accept left all together: nearly 300 schools are expected to shut because of a sharp drib in enrollment.
People are afraid to purchase more than a few days of food, and they complain that the constant power failures and surges in voltage take ruined household appliances.
José J. Villamil, an economist who works for a disaster direction house, said the blackouts made information technology very difficult for businesses to move forwards considering they keep having to spend money on things like voltage regulators.
"At the private level, an immediate reaction is that gas stations suddenly accept lines of cars waiting to make full up," he said. "The reason? People accept lost confidence that the problem will be resolved."
Juan de Jiménez Quiñones, 55, said it was like living in some other era.
"It's hasn't been easy, man," he said at the San Juan municipal infirmary where he was visiting his wife. "You know what's it like to cook your meals on firewood? It's like country living."
The buzz of the generators could be heard as he smoked his cigarette. "Oh God, help usa," said a man from exterior the hospital'south sliding glass doors.
Wed's blackout did non really affect Mr. Jiménez: Though the hurricane was vii months ago, his power had never been restored.
Mr. González said the coma occurred after a large excavator operated past a subcontractor, working to choice upwards a fallen 140-foot manual tower in a rural area, got too close to a loftier-voltage line, which led to a belch of energy. Equally a protection measure out, the line and the ability found information technology led to automatically went out of service. Only then the other ability-generating plants in the south went down, besides.
"It took out all the units in the south," Mr. González said.
The power in Puerto Rico is generated in the south and largely consumed in the north, a situation which leaves long transmission lines vulnerable to damage. The power company, unremarkably known every bit Prepa, has non yet been able to build backup systems to avoid massive power failures when something goes wrong, Mr. González said.
The subcontractor operating the excavator was D. Grimm Inc., a company that Puerto Rico officials also blamed for a failure last week that knocked out power to nigh half the island. The company, which had been subcontracted past Cobra Acquisitions, was fired, Mr. González said.
D. Grimm executives did non return several messages seeking comment. Reached on his cellphone, the chief operating officer said: "I don't know anything virtually that," and the line went dead.
A website for arborists showed the company had advertised for workers to assistance clear difficult terrain by hand in Puerto Rico. The offer was for $30 an hour, working x-hour days and seven-twenty-four hour period weeks. Commenters on the site balked at the depression pay for such treacherous work.
"Despite the frailty of the existing electrical infrastructure system, Cobra is dedicated to the hard work that lies ahead and continues to work around-the-clock with Prepa and the citizens of Puerto Rico to repair the entire infrastructure system to forestall outages such as this one from affecting the entire population on the isle," Mammoth Energy, the Oklahoma City company that owns Cobra, said in a statement.
There were no injuries, the company said.
The failure on Apr 12 occurred after a tree savage on the primary line to the capital, San Juan. The tree vicious equally crews working to restore ability tried to articulate state nearly Cayey.
Ricardo 50. Ramos, the former executive manager of the power company who was forced to resign in Nov over his treatment of the restoration, said that the cascade of line failures should not accept occurred, based on the design of the grid. Even if i ability plant overloaded, he said, the automatic shut-offs should take kicked in but in the affected area.
"The protection system has to be looked at carefully," Mr. Ramos said in a phone interview. "The system was fragile even before the hurricane. As I described information technology, it was a junker."
Leo Del Valle, 54, who lives and works in Caguas, said he went three months without power after Maria. He went home briefly after piece of work on Midweek and took an ice-common cold shower. If the blackout lasts longer than a two days, he said, the food in his refrigerator will go to waste. "Your day-to-24-hour interval changes completely," he said. "This wears on you psychologically."
During his ability loss at his home after the hurricane, he said, he probably spent thousands on generators and fuel. His father-in-law spent over $v,000. Mr. Del Valle was more judicious and limited himself to merely nine hours a day of generator use.
He noted that hurricane flavour starts presently.
"If we get hit over again, it'll exist a disaster," he said. "Total chaos."
Hurricane flavour starts June 1.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/18/us/puerto-rico-power-outage.html
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