Power Outage Affects Two-Thirds of Puerto Rico After Earthquake

The magnitude 6.4 earthquake that struck before dawn on Tuesday caused serious damage to one of Puerto Rico’s major power plants, Costa Sur, which generates about 40% of the island’s electricity.

Gov. Wanda Vázquez gave government workers the day off Wednesday and urged everyone to stay home, to “avoid chaos.” Most traffic lights were not working.

The governor said she and other senior officials traveled to the Costa Sur plant to check conditions after a series of earthquakes that have shaken the island since late December. “We were able to verify that it suffered severe damage to the infrastructure, to the point that employees were injured,” she said at a news conference Tuesday night.

A wall fell on an employee, who was hospitalized in stable condition, she said. Officials said that the damage to the plant was so bad that it may be beyond repair. Engineers may instead decide to focus on another power plant, which has received federal funding for improvements.

On Tuesday night, 97% of the island was in the dark. But nearly a half-million of the island’s 1.5 million customers had their power restored by Wednesday morning, the power authority said.

On Twitter, the agency said it was generating 542 megawatts of power by Wednesday morning. That is less than one-quarter of the amount normally needed at this time of year. Authorities worked through the night to fire up power plants around the island, but it was unclear whether they could generate enough electricity to make up for the loss of the Costa Sur plant.

José Ortiz, the chief executive of the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, said he hoped to get everyone’s power back on in the next day or so. He stressed that service would be restored gradually, in order to avoid overloading an unstable system.

The Trump administration approved Puerto Rico’s request for a federal disaster declaration for the earthquake, which will release some funding for things like debris removal and financial assistance for people who lost their houses.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times .