Puerto Rico suffered a large blackout on Wednesday that affected traffic, forced the closure of government offices and left tourists stranded throughout the island, a free territory associated with the US with 3.2 million inhabitants. Puerto Rico Energy Director, Josué Colón, said that officials still tried to determine the cause of the problem, but that it seemed that a failure in a transmission line had activated security mechanisms that disconnected all the electric plants of the island. Columbus indicated that electricity will not be completely restored throughout the territory until at least Thursday. At 16.20, local time, more than 1.1 million of 1.5 million customers were without electricity, according to the network operator, Luma Energy. He competed reported, hours later, that he had restored the service to approximately 41.5% of its customers on Thursday morning. Tourist high season The new blackout occurs just when the arrival of thousands of visitors to the island is expected for Easter holidays. Local media showed images of tourists trapped in cableways and travelers stranded in the San Juan Metro. The interim governor, Verónica Ferraiuoli, secretary of state of the island, said that the airport and the hotel association had not reported important interruptions, and that most of the tourist infrastructure worked with generators. Puerto Rico has one of the less reliable and most expensive electrical services of any US jurisdiction, and the blackouts are frequent. The island had already suffered a total blackout on the eve of the New Year. The efforts to modernize the electrical system have been slow, which has fed discontent among residents, whose daily lives are often affected.
