Blackout in Puerto Rico leaves 400,000 people without electricity after a large fire

The private firm LUMA Energy, which on June 1 began to take charge of the distribution and transmission of light in Puerto Rico, announced that some 400,000 subscribers are still without electricity after a fire broke out in a substation in a town near the capital, San Juan, where there are already various sectors that have recovered electricity service.

“Currently 400,000 clients are still without service. It has already been reestablished in various sectors of the San Juan metropolitan area”, the company indicated in a tweet and initially 700,000 were without electricity.

Given that the island is a Commonwealth and US territory, the FBI indicated that it is evaluating what happened, while the representative of Puerto Rico Jenniffer González, in the US Congress, believes that this fact, together with the blackouts that have occurred in recent days, are not isolated events.

The company, for its part, has indicated that the problem “has been isolated and restoration has begun, but it will take overnight to reach all areas”.

Since LUMA Energy began to take over electricity ten days ago there have been several blackouts in various neighborhoods of various cities on the island that have affected almost a million people to date.

”A fire broke out in a transformer at LUMA’s Monacillo substation. Protection systems interrupted electrical service. The restoration will begin in two hours and will continue overnight,” points to a tweet from the company shortly after 18.11 local time (22.11 GMT).

”Personnel from the Puerto Rico Police, Fire Department and Medical Emergencies are at the scene. No injuries have been reported”, it adds.

The fire caused “significant blackouts across the island” according to LUMA Energy.

In turn, its president, Wayne Stensby, told a press conference that they estimate that in six to eight hours service will be fully restored.

Among the affected areas are the capital, San Juan, Carolina, Bayamon, Trujillo Alto, Guaynabo, Río Grande, Loiza and Cataño, as well as sectors of Manatí, Caguas and Canovanas, among others.

For his part, the governor of Puerto Rico, Pedro Pierluisi, said that “all law and order authorities, both state and federal, are investigating the explosion at the Monacillos electrical substation in Rio Piedras.”

“We are taking all the necessary actions to protect essential services, such as electricity, and all the resources of our Government are active and available to attend this emergency”, he added.

The priority “has to be to restore service as soon as possible and our people can rest assured that we are ensuring that this is the case. At the same time, as we have the results of the investigations related to the cause of this incident, whoever is responsible for it will have to respond to the People of Puerto Rico,” he concluded.

Finally, the representative of Puerto Rico Before the United States Congress, Jenniffer González, said that the fire today in the aforementioned substation, the recent blackout that affected half a million customers and several sectors that have been without electricity on the island for a long time, did not seem to him “isolated events”.

”I have alerted federal law and order entities to investigate each event. They hurt the people, that’s the one who suffers”, he concluded.

Air operations at the San Juan international airport have not been affected by the blackout and, at the beginning of the event, it was operating with its own emergency electrical system.

LUMA Energy assumed the transmission and distribution of electric power in Puerto Rico, previously in the hands of the state Electric Power Authority (PREPA), which led to numerous protests as employees of the state company went to the commercial firm due to the agreements with the Executive and other government agencies.