A blackout darkened almost all of Puerto Rico early Tuesday morning as the U.S. territory prepared for New Year’s celebrations.
The loss of power means more than 1.2 million out of 1.47 million clients on the island are in the dark with baffled local officials saying it could take up to two days to restore power.
AP reports the devastating mass outage hit at dawn, plunging Puerto Rico into an eerie silence as electrical appliances and air conditioners shut down before those who could afford generators quickly turned them on.
“It had to be on the 31st of December!” exclaimed one man quoted by the outlet, who only gave his name as Manuel, as he stood outside a grocery store in the capital of San Juan, grumbling about the outage that coincided with his birthday. “There is no happiness.”
