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About 927,000 remain without electricity in Puerto Rico after Fiona

NEWYORK –

An estimated 926,500 homes and businesses were still without power in Puerto Rico on Friday morning, five days after Hurricane Fiona made landfall, knocking out power across the island for some of its 3.3 million people.

Hurricane Fiona is currently passing through Bermuda as it heads for Nova Scotia in Canada, classified as a major hurricane with winds of up to 125 mph (205 kph). The storm left at least eight people dead.

Fiona made landfall in Puerto Rico on Sunday, five years after Hurricane Maria knocked out full force on the island.

PowerOutage.us, which estimates outages based on utility data, said 926,500 customers were without service early Friday based on information from LUMA Energy, the operator of Puerto Rico’s power grid.

About 1,033 million customers were without power early Thursday out of a total of 1.468 million customers, according to PowerOutage.us, according to PowerOutage.us.

That recovery rate is much faster than after Maria – when nearly all of the 1.5 million customers were without power for a week. At the time, the bankrupt Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA) was still operating the grid.

PREPA took about 11 months to restore power to all customers, but Maria was a much stronger storm than Fiona.

The US Federal Emergency Management Agency has so far attributed four deaths to the storm in Puerto Rico.

Maria hit Puerto Rico in 2017 as a Category 4 hurricane with 155 mph winds, while Fiona struck as a Category 1 hurricane with 85 mph winds.

LUMA Energy said late Thursday that it had restored service to nearly 474,300 customers. “Full recovery can take several days,” LUMA said.

LUMA is a joint venture owned by units of Canadian energy company ATCO Ltd ATCx.TO (50%) and US energy contractor Quanta Services Inc PWR.N (50%).

PREPA still owns the majority of Puerto Rico’s electrical infrastructure. LUMA won a contract to operate the grid in 2020 and begin managing that system in 2021.


Reporting by Scott DiSavino Editing by Frances Kerry and Alistair Bell

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