Puerto Ricans were without power Thursday after a big fire erupted at an electricity plant that powers most of the island.
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SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico – Cheers erupted as lights slowly began to flicker on across Puerto Rico overnight as the USA territory struggled to emerge from an island-wide blackout following a fire at a power plant that caused the aging utility grid to fail.
Traffic was jammed and businesses were closed due to the outage, but telecommunications are working and Luis Muñoz Marin International Airport was open, Alejandro García Padilla, Puerto Rico governor, said during a news conference.
Almost 1.5 million customers of the state-run electric company were affected, and by this morning, power had only been restored to about 131,000 customers.
Javier Quintana, the executive director of the Electric Power Authority, said in a statement that he hopes to have full service restored sometime on Friday.
Power went out abruptly on Wednesday afternoon following a fire at a power plant in the southern town of Salinas.
Now, 3.5 million people are out of electricity.
“Given that the system is so old, numerous setbacks could occur” in the process of correcting the problem, Governor Padilla said.
According to the Puerto Rican paper El Nuevo Dia, a fire at a substation damaged two 230,000 volt power lines, resulting in a massive power outage that is still affecting customers across the island.
“This is a very serious event”, Garcia said.
The blackout is the worst to hit Puerto Rico in the last 36 years. “The system is not created to withstand a failure of this magnitude”. With the power off, you can also hear the buzz of those mosquitoes more clearly.
Utility officials said they were trying to determine what caused the fire that broke out on Wednesday afternoon at the Aguirre power plant.
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Traffic lights remained dark most of Thursday, and police officers stood in the streets directing traffic all day, some in heavy downpours. He said the switch where the fire began had received proper maintenance.
