Power started returning to homes and businesses in the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico on Wednesday afternoon after an islandwide outage — the second in recent months.
Authorities believe a transmission failure knocked both private and government-owned power plants out of service. A similar event happened on New Year’s Eve.
“It’s regrettable. If you ask me, it is unacceptable that this is happening. There’s no way we can accept for this to happen in Puerto Rico’s electric system. But, at this moment, we have to focus on reestablishing service,” said Josué Colón, energy czar under new Gov. Jenniffer González-Colón (R), during a press conference.
Officials said most homes and businesses would get their power back by Thursday or Friday. The grid requires power plants to be restarted slowly and in a certain sequence.
