Thursday, April 17

The entire island of Puerto Rico lost power yesterday after a major electrical grid failure, and hundreds of thousands of others were without water.

The failure affected every region of Puerto Rico, knocking out power to over 1.4 million people, and over 328,000 of those people also lost their water supply. However, crews have been working hard across the island, and around 175,000 people regained electricity before the end of the day. In addition, 90% of the remaining population should have their power back in a matter of days.

Nevertheless, the outage has had a major effect on the public's day-to-day lives. Malls, shops, and businesses were forced to close, public events and sports events were canceled, and traffic built up as signals across the island stopped working.

While the cause is not yet known, this is only another of Puerto Rico's consistent major blackouts. The island's poor infrastructure and crippled electrical grid, coupled with hurricanes each year of increasing strength, has led to problems like this occurring on a regular basis.

This has led to serious frustration among the people. Following the latest blackout, the public urged the government to end their contract with Luma Energy, the company that manages Puerto Rico's electricity, and Genera PR, the company that manages the generation of energy on the island. While it will take time to fix the situation, the first step in the right direction has already been taken, as the government has pledged to do so.

However, they will need funding, which has been a major issue for the government in the past. Puerto Rico's Electric Power Authority maintains over $9 billion in debt, and it is unlikely that current US President Donald Trump will provide them with the money to begin fixing their power grid.

Fact of the Day (Today): Out of Frida Kahlo's 143 paintings, 55 of them are self-portraits.

Quote of the Day (Gracious Quotes): Sometimes the smallest step in the right direction ends up being the biggest step of your life. (Emma Stone)

Word of the Day (Merriam-Webster): Adversity (noun, ad-VER-suh-tee) - Adversity refers to a difficult situation or condition, or to a state of serious or continued difficulty or misfortune.

In a Sentence: The soldiers were honored for acting with courage in the face of adversity.