An island-wide blackout plunged Puerto Rico into darkness on Wednesday. “The outage is affecting as many as 1.4 million customers,” ABC News reports. “LUMA continues working on the process of restoring the electrical system following the outage recorded at 12:38 p.m., following the unexpected shutdown of all generating plants. As part of our efforts to restore the electrical system, our personnel have continued working since the beginning of the event and will continue their efforts overnight to advance service restoration. We reiterate that, based on initial projections, we estimate that service will be restored to 90% of customers within 48 to 72 hours,” LUMA Energy wrote. “Our priority is to restore service to critical facilities such as the Centro Médico hospital and to customers as we have available generation. As part of our investigative efforts, we have conducted aerial patrols with helicopters, which identified that the event was caused by a combination of factors. Preliminary analysis points to a failure in the protection system as the initial trigger of the event, followed by the presence of vegetation on a transmission line between Cambalache and Manatí,” it continued. “This sequence of failures triggered a series of events that resulted in an island-wide outage. This event once again highlights the fragility of the electrical system, something LUMA has pointed out since the beginning of its operations. We remain committed to transforming it into a safer and more reliable system for all customers in Puerto Rico. We will continue to issue official updates as we move forward in the process,” it added. Actualización 8:00p.m – LUMA continúa trabajando en el proceso de restablecimiento del sistema eléctrico luego de la interrupción registrada a las 12:38 p.m., tras la salida inesperada de todas las plantas de generación. Como parte de nuestros esfuerzos para restaurar el… — LUMA Puerto Rico (@lumaenergypr) April 17, 2025 ABC News reports: Earlier in the day, LUMA Energy said the Palo Seco plant, located just outside San Juan, came back online around 3 p.m., “which represents a key step toward system recovery.” Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) claimed in a social media post that over 400,000 Puerto Ricans were without electricity. “The three million American citizens of Puerto Rico have long been denied affordable and reliable electricity—despite paying some of the highest utility rates in the United States,” Torres said. “Access to dependable power—a basic right most Americans take for granted—remains out of reach for millions on the island. As we speak, more than 400,000 Puerto Ricans are without electricity in the wealthiest nation on Earth. That is a national disgrace.” This outage is the latest in a series of significant blackouts that have plagued the island in recent years, following the devastation of Hurricane Maria in 2017, which destroyed much of the power grid. Gov. Jenniffer González, who was traveling, stated that officials were “working diligently” to resolve the outage. Power Outage Causes Blackout Across All Of Puerto Ricohttps://t.co/NYt5OLoQFu pic.twitter.com/7RIJ9s0H0g — Forbes (@Forbes) April 16, 2025 WATCH: Puerto Rico was hit with its second massive island-wide power outage since New Year's Eve. About 47% of customers have power back up and running as of the morning of April 17. https://t.co/Qlhip5tXwT pic.twitter.com/Yvu5SsUCBk — USA TODAY (@USATODAY) April 17, 2025 Per USA TODAY: Damage to the island’s power grid caused by Hurricane Maria persists years later. And in 2022, Hurricane Fiona once again plunged the island into darkness, causing a blackout that affected the entire U.S. territory of 3.2 million people. “It is unacceptable that five years after hurricane Maria, nothing has fundamentally changed,” Agustín Carbó, the San Juan-based senior manager of energy transition at the Environmental Defense Fund, said in 2022. “The current energy crisis is dire, and Puerto Ricans and the island’s economy are suffering.” Additionally, a 6.4-magnitude earthquake rumbled across Puerto Rico in early 2020, knocking out power to virtually the entire island. Former President Joe Biden approved billions of dollars in disaster funding for Puerto Rico and promised then Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm would lead a “supercharged effort” to modernize Puerto Rico’s power grid. For years, Puerto Rico has also faced a debt crisis which left the island unable to afford to maintain the grid, according to Laura Kuhl, a professor of public policy and urban affairs and international affairs at Northeastern University. The lack of maintenance combined with the centralized, top-down system make the grid particularly vulnerable to massive outages, Kuhl told Northeastern Global News in January.