TREMORS BEGAN SHAKING Puerto Rico just before New Year's Eve, causing anxiety but only minimally disrupting festivities. On Three Kings Day, January 6, families across the island observed one of its most important holidays, with children awakening to gifts left by the biblical kings. In the predawn hours after the celebration, a magnitude 6.4 earthquake hit, jerking people out of their beds. Its epicenter on the southern coast was mere miles from the Costa Sur power plant, which provides about a quarter of the island's electricity by burning natural gas and oil. The jolts knocked giant boilers off their bases, opened a fissure in one of the turbines, and destroyed the control center where the computers that run the system operate. Another natural gas plant, EcoEléctrica, was also damaged.

Despite the fact that the vast majority of the physical damage on the island was isolated in the south, all of Puerto Rico was plunged into darkness. It was déjà vu for many who had withstood months without electricity after Hurricane Maria, when a year and a half passed before power was fully restored.