Hurricane Ernesto Leaves Over 50% of Puerto Rico in the Dark (1)

More than 700,000 homes and businesses in Puerto Rico are without electricity in the wake of powerful storm Ernesto, which strengthened into a hurricane after thrashing the island’s fragile power grid.

Authorities aren’t able to say when service will be restored to the more than 50% of customers without power. Puerto Rico Governor Pedro Pierluisi said he directed grid manager Luma Energy to move quickly to lower the number of outages.

“It’s very difficult at this moment to say when we’ll have 100% service because they’re now in the streets surveying what the damage was,” Pierluisi said at a news ...