Power restored in Puerto Rico nearly five days after blackout

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — A private company announced Monday that electricity had been fully restored to Puerto Rico's almost 1.5 million customers nearly five days after a fire at a main power plant sparked an islandwide blackout and prompted public schools and government agencies to close.

Officials are now focused on investigating what exactly caused the failure of a circuit breaker at a substation within the Costa Sur power plant in southern Puerto Rico, one of four main plants in the US territory.

“I know many in Puerto Rico are asking, 'How is it that this happened?'” said Wayne Stensby, CEO of Luma, a company that took over transmission and distribution for the Puerto Rico's Electric Power Authority last year.

“There's no question the electricity grid in Puerto Rico is incredibly fragile.”

The blackout outraged and worried many on the island of 3.2 million people, including those who cannot afford generators and have medical conditions including diabetes and respiratory issues that depend on electricity for their treatments.

The outage snarled traffic, shuttered businesses and forced some people to sleep outdoors given the heat.

Customers angry over the extended outage noted they have been hit with recent increases in their power bills, and people complained the blackout damaged electrical appliances and forced them to throw out groceries as the island struggles to emerge from a more than decade-long economic crisis.

Gary Soto, director of Luma project system operations, said another outage occurred just days after the blackout that affected 25% of customers due to a new failure at another power plant involving a boiler that crews had recently repaired.

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