Puerto Rico crews scramble to restore power after island-wide outage
Electric service restoration efforts were still underway Thursday evening in Puerto Rico, a utility company said, a day after the start of an island-wide outage that left many people in the dark overnight and prompted school cancellations and other interruptions across the US territory.
2022-04-08 19:27:22 - VI News Staff
Most customers on the island of about 3.2 million residents still were without power Thursday, officials said. By day's end, at least 380,200 LUMA customers have had their power restored as of 10 p.m. local time, LUMA Energy said in a statement on its Twitter account.
"Given the massive size of the outage, its scope and the necessity to operate in safety, we are informing our customers that the restoration will continue through Thursday night and into Friday," the company said in the statement.
An unspecified failure led to a fire at the Costa Sur power plant outside the town of Guayanilla on the southwest coast around 8:45 p.m. Wednesday, cutting power across the island, Kevin Acevedo, vice president of LUMA Energy, said during a news conference. Firefighters have since extinguished the flames.
All customers on the island lost power service initially, Josue Colon, Puerto Rico's lead telecommunications and infrastructure engineer, told reporters, "because all the generating units went offline."
The exact cause wasn't immediately known, the utility has said.
LUMA Energy, which operates the island's power grid, expected power to be restored within 24 hours of the incident, Acevedo said at the news conference.
The power outage also has interrupted water service to about 100,000 homes and businesses, Gov. Pedro Pierluisi said, citing the island's aqueducts and sewers authority.
Puerto Rico's Department of Education canceled classes Friday for students, but "school principals, custodians, and school cafeteria employees must report to the campuses starting at 10:00 am," the department said in a tweet.
Pierluisi suspended school classes Thursday across the island and told nonessential government workers to stay home. Only government workers "with essential and emergency functions will have to report to work," Pierluisi said in a news release.