Puerto Rico struggles to emerge from outage as anger builds
ABC News
Hundreds of thousands of people across Puerto Rico remain without power nearly two days after a fire at a main power plant sparked an island-wide outage
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico -- Shuttered businesses. Sleepless nights. Canceled classes. Hundreds of thousands of people across Puerto Rico remained without power on Friday, nearly two days after a fire at a main power plant sparked an island-wide outage.
Crews have restored power to some 650,000 customers out of nearly 1.5 million, but people in several neighborhoods have complained that the electricity went out once again as the island struggles to emerge from the blackout that also left more than 160,000 clients without water.
The outage forced the government to cancel classes and shutter agencies for the second day in a row on this U.S. territory of 3.2 million people as frustration and anger bubbled over.
“This is unbearable,” said Maribel Hernández, 49, as she wiped her forehead with a small blue washcloth that she hung over her left shoulder.