Major outage forces Puerto Rico to shutter schools, offices

By DÁNICA COTO
Associated Press

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — More than a million customers in Puerto Rico remain without electricity after a fire at a main power plant caused an island-wide blackout that forced the U.S. territory to cancel classes and shutter government offices in the biggest outage yet this year. Wednesday night’s outage also left more than 180,000 customers without water. A private company that took over transmission and distribution from Puerto Rico’s Electric Power Authority last year said the blackout could have been caused by a circuit breaker failure at the Costa Sur generation plant. It is one of four main plants on the island.