Puerto Rico was slowly recovering from one of the largest power outages in years, after a fire near the Costa Sur power plant late Wednesday knocked out electricity to the entire island, Bloomberg News reported. As of about noon local time Thursday, electricity had been restored to 120,000 of the island’s 1.4 million clients, according to Luma Energy, the private company that manages the power grid. In a press conference, Luma’s Chief Operating Officer Wayne Stensby confirmed the blackout had started at about 8:45 p.m. Wednesday when a high-power circuit breaker near the 230 KW Costa Sur plant caught fire, causing a cascading series of generator shut-offs. But he said it would likely take “weeks” to discover the root cause of the problem. The outage forced island officials to cancel school, shut government offices and suspend some public transportation. While Stensby said crews were scrambling to bring power plants back online and reestablish the bulk transmission system, the company has warned that some customers might be without power until Friday. The outage comes as some politicians have been agitating to rescind the contract with Luma, which took over grid operations from the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, or Prepa, in June.
