SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — About two-thirds of Puerto Rico is without power after a massive fire at a power plant cause a blackout across the island Wednesday night.
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Luma Energy announced Wednesday night that it was responding to an “island-wide service interruption.”
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The service provider said that repairs were underway, but given the “size and scope” of the outage, restoration efforts could last into Friday in some regions.
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“We continue to make progress in the restoration, but due to extensive damage to the South Coast Substation, we are not able to provide an estimate of complete restoration at this time,” Luma announced on social media.
It’s the largest outage in Puerto Rico this year. Schools and offices are closed and all hospitals are relying on emergency power.
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Richard Colon lives in Punto Baja, about 15 minuets from San Juan. He’s one of many still being impacted by the island blackout.
“We’re all a bit scared. We’re all a bit shaky and anxious about the future of the island. We want to stay and we want to move forward but it’s so hard sometimes because these kinds of things set us back.
This marks the 14th blackout since Puerto Rico’s leaders decided to privatize the electrical grid, switching to the company Luna.
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ABC News reported that as of Thursday morning, more than a million customers were still without electricity and the blackout forced many schools and government offices to close across Puerto Rico.
Monitor WFTV.com and watch Eyewitness News for updates on this developing story.
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