Nearly 620,000 are still without power in Puerto Rico on Thursday, more than 24 hours after the entire island lost electricity when its power plants were knocked out of service, the latest breakdown of the territory’s faulty electric grid.
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Luma Energy, Puerto Rico’s electricity distributer, says it has restored power to more than 850,000 customers, or 57.9% of its customer base, as of 2:20 p.m. EDT on Thursday.
In the capital city of San Juan, 84% of Luma customers are back online Thursday afternoon, while only 27% of customers in the southern city of Ponce have had electricity restored (The full list of power restoration by region can be found on a live emergency response dashboard on Luma’s website).
The outage began at approximately 12:40 p.m. EDT on Wednesday, according to Luma’s social media, for reasons not immediately clear.
The blackout affected more than 1.4 million customers in Puerto Rico, The New York Times reported.
The Puerto Rico Federal Affairs Administration said in a post it is working with the White House and other federal agencies to “ensure that Puerto Rico receives the necessary support and that all essential services are restored as quickly and safely as possible.”
Gov. Jenniffer González said it would take at least three days to understand what caused the blackout, the Associated Press reported.
Puerto Rico has faced chronic power outages in the past, including a New Year’s Eve blackout last year that left almost the entire island without electricity. In 2017, Hurricanes Irma and Maria caused the country’s electric grid to collapse, leaving some without power for nearly a year, according to the Department of Energy. In 2019, the territory passed the Puerto Rico Energy Public Policy Act, which includes a goal for the island to fix its electricity woes by 2050 – though progress has been slow.
Flights from Luis Muñoz Marín Airport, located near San Juan, were operating normally as of 7:55 a.m. EDT on Thursday, according to a post from the airport’s X account, which said power has been completely restored. Late Wednesday afternoon the airport was running on generators due to the island-wide outage.
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