Repair crews worked through the night trying to restore electricity to Puerto Rico’s 3.5 million people early yesterday after a fire at a power plant blacked out the entire US territory.
Officials said they hoped to restore service by today, but some schools canceled classes for the day as a precaution. The island’s largest public hospital canceled elective surgeries and non-urgent appointments, while government officials and private groups put off dozens of scheduled events.
The Electric Power Authority said investigators were trying to determine what caused the fire that broke out on Wednesday afternoon at a power plant in southern Puerto Rico that serves a majority of customers on the island. The fire began at a switch and caused two transmission lines of 230,000 volts each to fail.
“This is a very serious event,” Governor Alejandro Garcia Padilla said. “The system is not designed to withstand a failure of this magnitude.”
The outage was the latest hit for an island mired in a decade-long economic crisis and whose government has warned it is running out of money as it seeks to restructure nearly US$70 billion in public debt.
Javier Quintana, the power company’s executive director, said he expected most power to be restored by morning.
He said airports, hospitals, police stations and water pumping stations would get priority.
Many Puerto Ricans expressed doubts that power would be restored quickly, saying the economic slump has affected basic government services.
Hundreds of people took to social media to criticize the Electric Power Authority, saying that they already pay bills on average twice that of the US mainland.
It was unclear how much damage the fire caused or where the power company would obtain the money to repair or buy new equipment. The utility is struggling with a US$9 billion debt that it hopes to restructure as it faces numerous corruption allegations. Company officials have said they are seeking more revenue to update what they say is outdated equipment.
However, the governor said that no amount of money or maintenance would have prevented the fire.
He said the switch where the fire began had received proper maintenance.
Authorities said Wednesday’s outage caused 15 fires across Puerto Rico as a result of malfunctioning generators, including at the upscale Vanderbilt hotel in the popular tourist area of Condado and at the mayor’s office in the northern coastal town of Catano.
All those fires were extinguished and no one was injured, officials said.
The blackout knocked out traffic lights, snarling the island’s roads. Businesses, universities and government offices closed early, putting even more cars on chaotic roads. Some people opted to not go home and hotels in the capital of San Juan quickly filled up.
India and Canada yesterday reached a string of agreements, including on critical mineral cooperation and a “landmark” uranium supply deal for nuclear power, the countries’ leaders said in New Delhi. The pacts, which also covered technology and promoting the use of renewable energy, were announced after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney hailed a fresh start in the relationship between their nations. “Our ties have seen a new energy, mutual trust and positivity,” Modi said. Carney’s visit is a key step forward in ties that effectively collapsed in 2023 after Ottawa accused New Delhi
Gaza is rapidly running out of its limited fuel supply and stocks of food staples might become tight, officials said, after Israel blocked the entry of fuel and goods into the war-shattered territory, citing fighting with Iran. The Israeli military closed all Gaza border crossings on Saturday after announcing airstrikes on Iran carried out jointly with the US. Israeli authorities late on Monday night said that they would reopen the Kerem Shalom crossing from Israel to Gaza yesterday, for “gradual entry of humanitarian aid” into the strip, without saying how much. Israeli authorities previously said the crossings could not be operated safely during
Counting was under way in Nepal yesterday, after a high-stakes parliamentary election to reshape the country’s leadership following protests last year that toppled the government. Key figures vying for power include former Nepalese prime minister K. P. Sharma Oli, rapper-turned-mayor Balendra Shah, who is bidding for the youth vote, and newly elected Nepali Congress party leader Gagan Thapa. In Kathmandu’s tea shops and city squares, people were glued to their phones, checking results as early trends flashed up — suggesting Shah’s centrist Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP) was ahead. Nepalese Election Commission spokesman Prakash Nyupane said the counting was ongoing “in a peaceful manner”
‘APARTHEID WALL’: Critics said the wall would not stop crime, and that it aimed to hide the poor and the fact that there is a privileged and privilege-deprived Cape Town Cape Town’s plans to build a wall to prevent attacks on the airport highway have divided South Africa’s tourist hotspot, with critics calling it an apartheid throwback to hide poverty. The nearly 9km wall would separate part of the road that leads in from the international airport from the packed, impoverished settlements that line the route. Attacks — some deadly — have been reported for years along the busy multi-lane route, including hijackings and smash-and-grab ambushes. “They’ll come with a stone and break the windscreen,” e-hailing driver Mustafa Hashim said, recounting stories of attacks on the corridor known as the “N2 hell
RSS