Puerto Rico continues to experience lack of power utility services, including water and other essentials, after the central grid collapsed on Wednesday afternoon leaving the whole island without power services.
On Wednesday afternoon, a fire broke at the power grid located in the southern town of Salinas, causing the decades-old electrical system to collapse sending millions into darkness.
The Puerto Rico’s Electric Power Authority (AEE/PREPA) estimated that 1.5 million customers are affected by the outage causing the Governor of the island, Alejandro Garcia-Padilla to declared a state of emergency ordering the closure of schools and non-essential services.
Governor of Puerto Rico declares state of emergency due to island's ongoing major power outage – @fortalezapr https://t.co/GGw7vN35rP
— Breaking News (@BreakingNews) September 22, 2016
The dramatic outages from a power station fire in Puerto Rico are seen in space by @NASANPP: https://t.co/9TpBW85pXl pic.twitter.com/GEENGtPmjQ
— NASA (@NASA) September 23, 2016
Most of Puerto Rico is without power: “This is an apocalypse” https://t.co/trRuVGrnxO pic.twitter.com/SEEWDL81kj
— Yahoo News (@YahooNews) September 22, 2016
Puerto Rico also depends on power to supply water systems around the island. Puerto Rico’s Government owns both electricity and water utility services which has caused many residents on the island to be without water. Cell phones and cable TV with internet are also affected by the power outage.
BREAKING: Puerto Rico declares state of emergency after a fire at a major power plant left 1.5M people w/out power. pic.twitter.com/WzmK3woK2q
— AJ+ (@ajplus) September 22, 2016
Hospitals and shopping outlets that have backup generator are also trying to cope with the outage, but remain operational. Other business were forced to close due to the lack of power. Traffic lights are also not working causing hours of delays on major roads.
On Friday, many Puerto Ricans claimed they got power services on, but according to reports, others have been getting sporadic electricity services, despite of the Government stating that services could return to normal by Friday evening, but no later than Monday.
Puerto Rico's power slowly being restored after fire causes island-wide blackout, says governor https://t.co/37e05okQpP pic.twitter.com/UJ4QRHOWid
— Chicago Tribune (@chicagotribune) September 22, 2016
One fatality was reported as the result of the misuse of generator. A resident kept the generator inside the house to avoid the noisy device being heard outside.