Companies Sue Puerto Rican Power Provider for $310 Million over Major Outage

­Puerto Rico hasn’t been exceedingly powerful over the last 5 years or so, from an 11-month blackout to a company taking over the island’s power distribution that possibly wasn’t fully prepared for the job.

Back in 2017, Hurricane Maria absolutely demolished Puerto Rico, highlighting the island’s ancient power grid and causing horrific human losses – anywhere from 1,427 to 4,600, depending on the source.

The Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA, irony unbound) had been putting off upgrades for years, and when the storm hit, it destroyed about 80% of the island’s utility poles and all transmission lines, leaving 1.5 million people without power.

Because PR had been suffering from an economic recession since 2006, they weren’t able to repair the grid immediately, and so the blackouts stretched on…for 328 days, making it the longest blackout in U.S. history and causing untold misery – I thought I had it bad when I lost power for 11 days during Hurricane Sandy, but it can always be worse. A lot worse.

Now, you’d think after all that suffering, Puerto Rico (and Washington) would’ve done their due diligence, allocated the proper resources to bring their power grid into the 21^st century, and chosen a power provider that could handle it all.

But that last bit is apparently up in the air – LUMA took over Puerto Rico’s power distribution last year, and they’re already facing a $310 million lawsuit from four food companies (MultiSystem Restaurant, Wendco of Puerto Rico, Apple Caribe, and Restaurant Operators) who claim they suffered huge financial losses in April as the result of a power outage.

The companies manage chains like Olive Garden, Red Lobster, and Applebees on the island, and after a fire at the Costa Sur power plant caused a huge outage earlier this year, about a million people lost electricity, and the corporations ended up with a ton of spoiled food.

All told, Puerto Rico lost about $500 million as a result of the power outage, and $310 million is an estimate of the food companies’ specific losses.

Here’s hoping Puerto Rico manages to fix its ancient power grid and make these constant, devastating outages a thing of the past.