Puerto Rico is left without electricity after power plant catches fire

The entire island of Puerto Rico was left in darkness on Wednesday after the territory’s largest power plant caught on fire, causing interruptions to daily life.

The private utility company in charge of distributing power to the island, Luma, claimed that the blackout had affected the island’s 3.2 million population. However, according to the state power company’s website, only 1.5 million were left in the dark.

"I urge everyone to remain calm," said Governor Pedro Pierluisi, trying to address the concerns of citizens with family members who depend on electricity to keep their loved ones alive at hospitals. He added that priority would be given to restoring electricity to hospitals and other institutions. 

The island’s health secretary said all hospitals and health centers were running on generators and were functioning. 

On Wednesday, at around 8:45 p.m., an unspecified failure caused a fire at the Costa Sur power plant outside of Guayanilla, Luma Vice President Kevin Acevedo said at a press conference. 

In a statement, Luma said that power might not be restored until Thursday. Luma added that it would release more information whenever it had more details about the situation. 

"The power grid has suffered a massive island-wide blackout, potentially caused by a circuit breaker failure at the Costa Sur generation plant. We are not clear on the exact cause at this time," the company said.

“The system is being restored little by little,” added Acevedo. “The people of Puerto Rico have to understand that it’s a system with a lot of years. Bringing back Puerto Rico‘s system is a delicate and complicated process.”

Puerto Rico has had periodic blackouts over the last few years due to problems with its electrical grid. Luma took over the island’s electricity distribution and transmission in June, promising to reduce power interruptions by 30% and the length of outages by 40%.