© Archyde.com / MARCO BELLO
Referential file image of high-voltage electrical cables at the Costa Sur power plant after an earthquake in Guayanilla
April 7 (Archyde.com) – Puerto Rico was trying to restore power to nearly a third of the island on Thursday as utility officials tried to determine the exact cause of the massive blackout in the Caribbean country, which may have been caused by a fire. in a power plant.
Nearly 400,000 of the 1.4 million homes and businesses in the US territory were without power as of Thursday morning, according to a Archyde.com tally.
LUMA Energy could take well into Thursday or even Friday to restore power in some areas, given the sheer size and scope of the outage, the power company said.
“LUMA teams are responding and working to restore service as quickly as possible,” he said.
The exact cause of the island-wide power outage is unknown, LUMA said, but a faulty switch at the Costa Sur power plant could be to blame.
The Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority posted a video on Twitter of a fire at the plant in Guayanilla, a city in the southwest of the island, on Wednesday night.
Hurricane Maria, which left all of Puerto Rico without power in 2018, exposed the fragile state of the power grid on the island of 3.3 million people.
“I urge all our people to remain calm,” Puerto Rico Governor Pedro Pierluisi said in a tweet on Thursday.
(Reporting by Brendan O’Brien in Chicago; Spanish editing by Carlos Serrano)