New company, same woes: Puerto Rico suffers power outages

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — A private company that took over power transmission and distribution in Puerto Rico this month has struggled with widespread outages and growing anger as it scrambled to control a fire that left hundreds of thousands of clients in the dark.

Officials say outages had affected more than 1 million customers so far this month, not counting those affected by the explosion and fire at a main substation in the capital of San Juan. Several mayors had declared an emergency as they distributed ice and generators to those most in need before Thursday's fire, whose cause was under investigation as officials warned it would take all night to restore power after a transformer blew.

Around 700,000 clients were without power at the height of the outage, and at least 400,000 remained without electricity late Thursday.

Many in Puerto Rico had hoped for a quick improvement in service, but clients complain it has gotten even worse in Luma’s first few days of operations – with problems complicated by heavy rains this week followed by the explosion.

“This has turned into chaos,” said Javier Jiménez, mayor of the western town of San Sebastián, which had established its own brigade of workers to make repairs after Hurricane Maria largely destroyed the U.S. territory’s electrical grid in 2017, leaving some people without electricity for nearly a year.

Jiménez said he was forced to activate that brigade once again this week because Luma Energy, which took over the transmission and distribution system of Puerto Rico’s Electric Power Authority on June 1, told him it did not have enough manpower to restore electricity to the more than 1,000 families left in the dark over the weekend in his town.

“I could not believe it,” he said. “A company that has been here just...