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By Khaleda Rahman
National Correspondent
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A major power outage has hit Puerto Rico, leaving hundreds of thousands of the island's residents in darkness after a fire erupted at a power plant.
The blackout, one of the biggest in recent months for the island's crumbling electrical grid, prompted frustration across social media. "Apagón!" many wrote, using the Spanish word for outage.
Luma, a private company that took over transmission and distribution of Puerto Rico's Electric Power Authority last year, described it an island-wide blackout.
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However, the state power company's website said about 360,000 customers out of nearly 1.5 million were without power.
In a statement, Luma said that power might not be restored until later on Thursday "given the size and scope" of the outage.
"The power grid has suffered a massive island-wide blackout, potentially caused by a circuit breaker failure at the Costa Sur generation plant. We are not clear on the exact cause at this time," the company said.
Videos on Twitter and Facebook showed a major fire at Costa Sur, one of the island's four main power plants.
In a post on Facebook, Puerto Rico's Electric Power Authority said "the electrical system protection system took the rest of the units that were generating out of service" following the fire.
"We are stabilizing the generating units to avoid damage to them. Once LUMA Energy restores the 230kv and 115kv transmission network, we will begin the unit start-up process to restore the system little by little. This process will take about 12 hours."
Gov. Pedro Pierluisi said it could take up to 24 hours to restore power to the whole island and that priority would be given to hospitals and other institutions.
"I urge all our people to remain calm and to be aware of the information updates provided by the agencies in charge and LUMA," he tweeted.
Carlos Mellado López, Puerto Rico's health secretary, said on Twitter all hospitals and health centers had generators with sufficient fuel, and that "no major inconveniences" had been reported. He added that vaccines and other medications remained properly stored at the correct temperature.
López later tweeted that the Mayagüez Medical Center was having problems with one of its generators. "The ventilators have a battery and backups that allow continuity for patients," he wrote.
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It was the hospital's main generator that failed, and engineering teams are working to resolve the issue, a hospital spokeswoman said in a statement to CBS reporter David Begnaud.
"However, it is important to highlight that the intensive care units are partially energized, guaranteeing that ventilators are working properly," the statement said.
"The Pediatric Emergency Room are fully energized. All shift supervisors have the situation under control, and there are physicians deployed in the areas where there are patients on ventilators to monitor them constantly. All the engineers and specialized technicians are currently working non-stop to address the situation."
Update 4/7/22, 4:25 a.m. ET: This article has been updated with additional information.
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