Yaril Castro has family left in the dark in Puerto Rico. Puerto Ricans faced another night of darkness Thursday as crew.
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People buy ice during a massive blackout in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Thursday, September 22, 2016. The rest of the island should have the lights on by Friday, the director of the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority said.
A woman carries a bag of ice that she bought at El Angel Ice Plant during a massive blackout in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Thursday, Sept. 22, 2016.
Early on Thursday, almost 24 hours after a blackout caused by a power plant fire shut down power across Puerto Rico that set off a cascade of problems for the island’s aging utility grid, some 200,000 customers had their electricity back on.
Puerto Rico can’t catch a break right now: Fraught with Zika cases that have stymied its tourism industry this year, it is now in the middle of a power outage that has affected almost the entire island-including 1.5 million utility customers, according to the most recent reports.
“We’ve surpassed our expectations”, Gov. Alejandro Garcia Padilla said.
“We can assure that we are working to restore service in the safest way”.
“On behalf of the 3.4 million American citizens residing in Puerto Rico, I asked the president to declare Puerto Rico an emergency zone, which empowers the federal government to use its resources to stabilize the electrical system of Puerto Rico and so guarantee service to citizens, “said González Colón in a news release, which was translated to English”.
Garcia said temporary power outages would still occur over the weekend, but the island can ill-afford anything – rolling outages or otherwise – after that.
The lights went out briefly during Friday’s press conference at the island’s emergency operations center, provoking a laugh from government officials addressing reporters.
Almost 370,000 of the 1.5 million homes and businesses served by the power utility had power back by late Thursday.
Meanwhile, the president of the island’s sewer system, Alberto Lazaro, said that potable water service had been interrupted for some 340,000 customers due to the blackout.
The vast majority of Puerto Ricans don’t have generators and they were forced to spend the night in darkness and without air conditioning in the tropical heat.
“It’s been terrible”, said San Juan resident Elizabeth Maldonado, adding that she was resigned to another sleepless night. “I take a cold shower right before going to bed”. Businesses closed, long lines formed at gas stations and rooms quickly filled at hotels with generators.
Luis Muñoz Marin International Airport continues to operate, the governor noted, and many major hotels are running on generators.
Localized power outages are common in Puerto Rico, which has an outdated energy infrastructure, but widespread failures such as this are extremely rare.
Firefighters extinguished the blaze at the southern power plant, though cause of the fire remains unknown. The blaze began at a switch and caused two transmission lines of 230,000 volts each to fail.
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But Garcia rejected suggestions the blackout was caused by maintenance problems that have plagued the utility for years, largely a result of the island’s economic and fiscal crisis.
