The power is out again in Puerto Rico, 7 months after Hurricane Maria

Marcus Gilmer
Updated

Seven months after Hurricane Maria, Puerto Rico is still dealing with the fallout as it experienced an island-wide blackout on Wednesday.

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This latest power outage follows a series of outages in the months since Maria. Just last week, half of the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority's (PREPA) customers lost power when a tree fell across a major power line. And in November 2017, San Juan and several other cities lost power at least twice due to a failure. 

Per CNN, PREPA is focusing primary efforts on getting power back to hospital and water services as well as banks and the city of San Juan. The outage was reportedly caused when an excavator hit a main transmission line while clearing vegetation. PREPA is hoping to have power restored in the next 24 to 36 hours

One spotlight event will go on as scheduled, though. The Cleveland Indians and Minnesota Twins are in San Juan for a two-game series and Wednesday's night game will go forward as planned thanks to generators to power the lights at Hiram Bithorn Stadium. 

The island's infrastructure and power grid were already fragile before Maria struck in late September 2017, lashing the island with sustained winds of up to 140 miles per hour, throwing the entire island into the dark and straining resources. 

Controversy has followed recovery efforts in Puerto Rico, including President Trump's disastrous response to the storm and the much-debated contract initially given to Whitefish Energy to repair the power infrastructure.

And the exact death toll from the storm is still unknown; while the official number stands at 65, this number is likely far too low, with some estimates pegging it at closer to 1,000.