SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — A massive outage has wiped out power to Puerto Rico’s capital San Juan.
The problem is with a failure on a main north-south transmission line, said Fernando Padilla, an official with the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority.
“It was a mechanical issue on the line, could have happened at any line,” he said. “It’s being patrolled and repaired by PREPA.”
Power went out about 11:30 a.m. local time (8:30 a.m. MST).
Homes and businesses that had been on grid power had to restart generators if they had them.
Power generation plummeted from more than 40 percent of capacity to 18 percent on Thursday, PREPA said.
Much of Puerto Rico has been without power since Hurricane Maria smashed the island on Sept. 20.