Alex Figueroa
Appearances
Up First from NPR
Ukraine's New Year's Agony, Puerto Rico Power Outages, Dry January Tips
Well, people woke up in shock yesterday, and that humming from the power generators across towns was a terrible flashback from New Year's celebration. 2017 after the hurricane, but partial outages have been a plague for years now. But it's been a while since there was a total blackout without a natural disaster.
Up First from NPR
Ukraine's New Year's Agony, Puerto Rico Power Outages, Dry January Tips
And it happened in a day when people were preparing for their celebrations at home and elsewhere. So many had to make adjustments to gather with loved ones and to receive the New Year.
Up First from NPR
Ukraine's New Year's Agony, Puerto Rico Power Outages, Dry January Tips
Well, Luma Energy, which is the company in charge of the power lines in Puerto Rico, said in a statement that there was some kind of failure on a major underground cable that carries energy out of one of the principal power plants located in the south coast of the island. At this point, Luma has not said what caused that damage. Last night, it said that the investigation was ongoing.
Up First from NPR
Ukraine's New Year's Agony, Puerto Rico Power Outages, Dry January Tips
All we know is that when the plant was not able to send energy out, it protected itself by shutting down. That's supposed to happen, but... What we haven't seen in a long time is that without the major disasters going on, all the other power plants went down also in a chain reaction.
Up First from NPR
Ukraine's New Year's Agony, Puerto Rico Power Outages, Dry January Tips
Yeah, that's something that almost everybody here still can understand. There was a time that other countries in this region studied our grid because it was ahead of this time, but for decades it didn't receive the maintenance properly and important upgrades were not made.
Up First from NPR
Ukraine's New Year's Agony, Puerto Rico Power Outages, Dry January Tips
At the same time, the government agency that was in charge of the grid for decades went into a $9 billion debt that is right now in court. Plus, many of the restoration projects with money from FEMA after Maria are still waiting to start.
Up First from NPR
Ukraine's New Year's Agony, Puerto Rico Power Outages, Dry January Tips
The power has been coming back gradually. The latest update we received just moments ago, it was that 77% of the 1.4 million clients are back on service. But according to Luma, a full restoration will take from 24 to 48 hours because of the time.
Up First from NPR
Ukraine's New Year's Agony, Puerto Rico Power Outages, Dry January Tips
Many have. There's an increasing sector of the population that have been gearing up, but there are a lot of people, especially elderly, that doesn't have the resources.