Hundreds still without electricity in Puerto Rico following power plant fire
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (CMC) – More than two days after a fire at a power plant in Puerto Rico, hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses remain without power on Saturday.
Although power has been restored to more than one million customers by the company LUMA Energy, approximately 500,000 home homes and businesses are still in darkness.
The outage also closed schools for two days and caused other interruptions for the island’s 3.2 million residents.
An unspecified failure led to a fire at the plant outside the town of Guayanilla on the southwest coast around 8:45 on Wednesday.
The exact cause of the fire was not immediately known.
According to Governor Pedro Pierluisi, the power outage also has interrupted water service to tens of thousands of homes and businesses.
LUMA is a joint venture of Quanta Services and the Canadian energy company ATCO, which the Puerto Rican government chose to take over the operation of the power grid from its previous public electric utility, the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority.
LUMA has been in charge of the power grid since June 1.
