SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico—Power was slowly being restored in Puerto Rico on Thursday, nearly 24 hours after a blackout swept across the island when a fire at a power plant set off a cascade of problems that knocked out the aging utility grid.
Some 200,000 customers had electricity back by early Thursday afternoon, and officials said that number could reach a half million in the next several hours. But it will be Friday before nearly all of the power company’s 1.5 million customers are reconnected, said Gov. Alejandro Garcia Padilla, who declared a state of emergency.
He said he understood people’s frustrations and the need to blame someone for the blackout, which plunged the U.S. territory’s 3.5 million inhabitants into darkness amid a decade-long economic crisis that has worn Puerto Ricans down.
