Officials demand answers as crews work to restore power after another Puerto Rico blackout

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Crews scrambled to restore power to Puerto Rico on Thursday after a blackout hit the entire island the previous day, affecting the main international airport, hospitals and hotels filled with Easter vacationers.

The outage that began around midday Wednesday left 1.4 million customers without electricity and more than 400,000 without water. More than 958,000 customers, or 65%, had power back by Thursday night, while 89% of customers had water restored. Officials expected 90% of customers to have power back within 48 to 72 hours after the outage, although 200,000 clients were left without power again on Thursday afternoon when one power plant failed twice.

“We are still in a precarious situation. This is old, fragile equipment," said Gov. Jenniffer González, who cut her weeklong vacation short and returned to Puerto Rico on Wednesday evening.

She said it would take at least three days to have preliminary information on what might have caused the blackout, which snarled traffic, forced hundreds of businesses to close and left those unable to afford generators scrambling to buy ice and candles.

“This is a shame for the people of Puerto Rico that we have a problem of this magnitude,” the governor said.

González warned that the boiler of one power plant was not functioning and would take one week to repair, which could affect power generation next week, when people return from vacation.

It’s the second massive blackout to hit Puerto Rico in less than four months. The previous one happened on New Year’s Eve.

“Why on holidays?” griped José Luis Richardson, who did not have a generator and kept cool by splashing water on himself every couple of hours.

The roar of generators and smell of fumes filled the air as a growing number of Puerto Ricans renewed calls for the government to cancel the contracts with Luma Energy, which oversees the transmission and distribution of power, and Genera PR, which oversees power generation.

González promised to heed those calls.

“That is not under doubt or question,” she said, but added that it’s not a quick process. “It is unacceptable that we have failures of this kind.”

González said a major outage, like the latest one, causes an estimated $215 million revenue loss daily.

Ramón C. Barquín III, president of the United Retail Center, a nonprofit that represents small- and medium-sized businesses, warned that ongoing outages would spook potential investors at a time when Puerto Rico urgently needs economic development.

“We cannot continue to repeat this cycle of blackouts without taking concrete measures to strengthen our energy infrastructure,” he said.

Many also were concerned about Puerto Rico’s elderly population, with the mayor of Canóvanas deploying brigades to visit the bedridden and those who depend on electronic medical equipment.

Meanwhile, the mayor of Vega Alta opened a center to provide power to those with lifesaving medical equipment.

Wednesday night was difficult for many, including 62-year-old Santos Bones Burgos.

“I spent it on the balcony,” he said, adding that he was trying to get some fresh air.

At some point, he fell asleep and recalled waking up at 5 a.m. to a neighbor yelling, “The power is back!”

Among those unable to sleep was Dorca Navarrete, a 50-year-old house cleaner who said it was too hot. “Last night was horrible,” she said. "I woke up with a headache.”

When she opened her eyes, she saw light and thought it couldn't possibly be the sun at that hour. Then a smile spread across her face when she realized it was from the light she had left on in a room the day before.

It was not immediately clear what caused the shutdown, the latest in a string of major blackouts on the island in recent years.

Officials are looking into whether several breakers failed to open or exploded. González said.

Another possibility is that overgrown vegetation affected the grid, which, if true, should not have happened, said Josué Colón, the island’s energy czar and former executive director of Puerto Rico’s Electric Power Authority.

He noted that the authority flew daily to check on certain lines, something he said Luma should be doing.

Colón said Luma also needs to explain why all the generators shut down after there was a failure in the transmission system, when only one was supposed to go into protective mode.

Pedro Meléndez, a Luma engineer, said an investigation is ongoing. He said in a news conference Thursday that the line where the failure occurred was inspected last week as part of regular air patrols to check on more than 2,500 miles worth of transmission lines across the island.

“No imminent risk was identified,” he said.

Daniel Hernández, vice president of operations at Genera PR, said Wednesday that a disturbance hit the transmission system shortly after noon, a time when the grid is vulnerable because there are few machines regulating frequency at that hour.

Puerto Rico has struggled with chronic outages since September 2017, when Hurricane Maria pummeled the island as a powerful Category 4 storm, razing a power grid that crews are still struggling to rebuild.

The grid already had been deteriorating as a result of decades of a lack of maintenance and investment under the state's Electric Power Authority, which is struggling to restructure $9 billion in debt.

On Jan. 9, Puerto Rico's representative in Congress, Pablo José Hernández, joined by legislators including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, sent a letter to U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright calling for the release of federal funds slated for the installation of rooftop solar and battery storage in Puerto Rico. The money is meant to help those whose disabilities or medical conditions require a power connection.

Puerto Rico's governor also has repeatedly called for those funds to be released.

Follow AP’s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america

A man uses a plastic plate to fan the flames of a makeshift charcoal grill outside his home during a blackout in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Thursday, April 17, 2025. (AP Photo/Alejandro Granadillo)

Nurys Perez, owner of Nurys Salon, styles a client's hair on the sidewalk outside her shop during a blackout in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Thursday, April 17, 2025. (AP Photo/Alejandro Granadillo)

Drivers fill up fuel containers at a gas station during an island-wide blackout in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Wednesday, April 16, 2025. (AP Photo/Alejandro Granadillo)

Customers sit inside a restaurant lit by battery-powered lanterns during an island-wide power outage, in Old San Juan, Puerto Rico, Wednesday, April 16, 2025. (AP Photo/Alejandro Granadillo)

Vehicles navigate a dark street in Old San Juan, Puerto Rico, during an island-wide blackout, Wednesday, April 16, 2025. (AP Photo/Alejandro Granadillo)

A local fills fuel containers at a gas station in San Juan, Puerto Rico, during an island-wide blackout, Wednesday, April 16, 2025. (AP Photo/Alejandro Granadillo)

A gas station employee directs traffic as cars line up for fuel during an island-wide blackout in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Wednesday, April 16, 2025. (AP Photo/Alejandro Granadillo)

Headlights illuminate cobblestone streets in Old San Juan, Puerto Rico, during an island-wide blackout, Wednesday, April 16, 2025. (AP Photo/Alejandro Granadillo)

WASHINGTON (AP) — A day after the audacious U.S. military operation in Venezuela, President Donald Trump on Sunday renewed his calls for an American takeover of the Danish territory of Greenland for the sake of U.S. security interests, while his top diplomat declared the communist government in Cuba is “in a lot of trouble.”

The comments from Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio after the ouster of Venezuela's Nicolás Maduro underscore that the U.S. administration is serious about taking a more expansive role in the Western Hemisphere.

With thinly veiled threats, Trump is rattling hemispheric friends and foes alike, spurring a pointed question around the globe: Who's next?

“It’s so strategic right now. Greenland is covered with Russian and Chinese ships all over the place," Trump told reporters as he flew back to Washington from his home in Florida. "We need Greenland from the standpoint of national security, and Denmark is not going to be able to do it.”

Asked during an interview with The Atlantic earlier on Sunday what the U.S.-military action in Venezuela could portend for Greenland, Trump replied: “They are going to have to view it themselves. I really don’t know.”

Trump, in his administration's National Security Strategy published last month, laid out restoring “American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere” as a central guidepost for his second go-around in the White House.

Trump has also pointed to the 19th century Monroe Doctrine, which rejects European colonialism, as well as the Roosevelt Corollary — a justification invoked by the U.S. in supporting Panama’s secession from Colombia, which helped secure the Panama Canal Zone for the U.S. — as he's made his case for an assertive approach to American neighbors and beyond.

Trump has even quipped that some now refer to the fifth U.S. president's foundational document as the “Don-roe Doctrine.”

Saturday's dead-of-night operation by U.S. forces in Caracas and Trump’s comments on Sunday heightened concerns in Denmark, which has jurisdiction over the vast mineral-rich island of Greenland.

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen in a statement that Trump has "no right to annex" the territory. She also reminded Trump that Denmark already provides the United States, a fellow member of NATO, broad access to Greenland through existing security agreements.

“I would therefore strongly urge the U.S. to stop threatening a historically close ally and another country and people who have made it very clear that they are not for sale,” Frederiksen said.

Denmark on Sunday also signed onto a European Union statement underscoring that “the right of the Venezuelan people to determine their future must be respected” as Trump has vowed to “run” Venezuela and pressed the acting president, Delcy Rodriguez, to get in line.

Trump on Sunday mocked Denmark’s efforts at boosting Greenland’s national security posture, saying the Danes have added “one more dog sled” to the Arctic territory’s arsenal.

Greenlanders and Danes were further rankled by a social media post following the raid by a former Trump administration official turned podcaster, Katie Miller. The post shows an illustrated map of Greenland in the colors of the Stars and Stripes accompanied by the caption: “SOON."

“And yes, we expect full respect for the territorial integrity of the Kingdom of Denmark,” Amb. Jesper Møller Sørensen, Denmark's chief envoy to Washington, said in a post responding to Miller, who is married to Trump's influential deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller.

During his presidential transition and in the early months of his return to the White House, Trump repeatedly called for U.S. jurisdiction over Greenland, and has pointedly not ruled out military force to take control of the mineral-rich, strategically located Arctic island that belongs to an ally.

The issue had largely drifted out of the headlines in recent months. Then Trump put the spotlight back on Greenland less than two weeks ago when he said he would appoint Republican Gov. Jeff Landry as his special envoy to Greenland.

The Louisiana governor said in his volunteer position he would help Trump “make Greenland a part of the U.S.”

Meanwhile, concern simmered in Cuba, one of Venezuela’s most important allies and trading partners, as Rubio issued a new stern warning to the Cuban government. U.S.-Cuba relations have been hostile since the 1959 Cuban revolution.

Rubio, in an appearance on NBC's “Meet the Press,” said Cuban officials were with Maduro in Venezuela ahead of his capture.

“It was Cubans that guarded Maduro,” Rubio said. “He was not guarded by Venezuelan bodyguards. He had Cuban bodyguards.” The secretary of state added that Cuban bodyguards were also in charge of “internal intelligence” in Maduro’s government, including “who spies on who inside, to make sure there are no traitors.”

Trump said that “a lot” of Cuban guards tasked with protecting Maduro were killed in the operation. The Cuban government said in a statement read on state television on Sunday evening that 32 officers were killed in the U.S. military operation.

Trump also said that the Cuban economy, battered by years of a U.S. embargo, is in tatters and will slide further now with the ouster of Maduro, who provided the Caribbean island subsidized oil.

“It's going down,” Trump said of Cuba. “It's going down for the count.”

Cuban authorities called a rally in support of Venezuela’s government and railed against the U.S. military operation, writing in a statement: “All the nations of the region must remain alert, because the threat hangs over all of us.”

Rubio, a former Florida senator and son of Cuban immigrants, has long maintained Cuba is a dictatorship repressing its people.

“This is the Western Hemisphere. This is where we live — and we’re not going to allow the Western Hemisphere to be a base of operation for adversaries, competitors, and rivals of the United States," Rubio said.

Cubans like 55-year-old biochemical laboratory worker Bárbara Rodríguez were following developments in Venezuela. She said she worried about what she described as an “aggression against a sovereign state.”

“It can happen in any country, it can happen right here. We have always been in the crosshairs,” Rodríguez said.

AP writers Andrea Rodriguez in Havana, Cuba, and Darlene Superville traveling aboard Air Force One contributed reporting.

In this photo released by the White House, President Donald Trump monitors U.S. military operations in Venezuela, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., Saturday, Jan. 3, 2026. (Molly Riley/The White House via AP)