Power slowly returning to Puerto Rico after damaging earthquake

Jan. 8--SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico -- Power began returning to Puerto Rico early Wednesday, almost 24 hours after a magnitude 6.4 earthquake damaged the country's principal generation plants and left one dead on the U.S. territory of 3.2 million people.

Puerto Rico's Electric Power Authority said that as of 7:27 a.m., electricity had been restored to about a third of its 1.4 million clients.

A series of earthquakes that began Dec. 28 concentrated off the island's southern coast have destroyed hundreds of homes and dozens of businesses and plunged the entire island into darkness. In particular, back-to-back earthquakes Tuesday morning damaged the Costa Sur and EcoElectrica power plants in the sprawling complex near Guayanilla, close to the epicenter of the seismic activity.

The damage led President Donald Trump on Tuesday to sign an emergency declaration for the island. All public offices and schools remained closed on Wednesday and Gov. Wanda Vázquez has reassured jittery residents that power would be restored to most parts of the territory by the end of Thursday. Even so, she warned that continued seismic activity meant power distribution might be unstable for days.

The emergency declaration allows the Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA, to "identify, mobilize, and provide at its discretion, equipment and resources necessary to alleviate the impacts of the emergency," the White House said.

On Wednesday, Vázquez thanked Trump for the federal aid and said the island needed outside help.

"Blackouts, debris, infrastructure, businesses, homes -- all of Puerto Rico's municipalities have been impacted by these earthquakes," she said in a statement. "The magnitude of this event is such that the state government and municipal governments of Puerto Rico don't have the capacity to effectively respond."

Puerto Rico's power grid is notoriously frail and never completely recovered from Hurricane Maria in 2017. After that storm, it took a full year to restore power to the entire island.

While lights flickered on in parts of the capital overnight, large swaths of the island remained in the dark Wednesday.

Fernando Padilla, the power utility's administrator of restructuring and fiscal affairs, said that as of Wednesday evening 600,000 of the company's 1.4 million clients have power.

He added that, unlike after Hurricane Maria, the problem is not with the electrical lines themselves but with the power plants, which were damaged by the quake, particularly in the Costa Sur complex in the south.

Although critics have mentioned Puerto Rico's outdated infrastructure as part of the problem, Padilla said it wasn't that simple.

"We've seen new infrastructure that suffered damage and old assets that are completely intact," he said.

The electric utility's CEO, Jose Ortiz told El Nuevo Dia newspaper that it could take months, or longer, to fully restore operations in Costa Sur.

"It could take a year to get the [Costa Sur complex] fully restarted because there's extensive structural damage," he said.

Even though the complex is considered the heart of Puerto Rico's energy generation, utility officials said they could still provide power to the entire island without it.

On Tuesday night, many people slept outdoors amid frequent aftershocks. The Puerto Rican Seismic Network has recorded more than 35 aftershocks since Tuesday morning.

In the hard-hit city of Guanica, on the southern coast, more than 200 people spent the night camping outside a coliseum turned emergency shelter.

Virginia Ayala Flores, 74, had taken her frail husband, Dolores Feliciano, 83, to sleep on one of the cots. While her house showed no signs of damage, she said she no longer felt safe there as the tremors flung open her refrigerator and knocked paintings off the walls.

"I can't sleep inside anymore," she said Tuesday. "In all the years I've lived here I've never been this scared."

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