Is Puerto Rico still without power? When will holiday island get power back after outage hits causing total blackout - as locals prepare for Easter weekend

Luma Energy, a private company that operates power transmission and distribution, reported that the outage began at about 12:40 p.m. local time on Wednesday April 16. The company said "an event was recorded that affected service island-wide," meaning all 1.4 million customers on the island were without power.

In an evening update, the Puerto Rico Governor's Office said the outage resulted from a failure in the transmission of the electrical system. Gov. Jenniffer González-Colón called the transmission issue "unacceptable." A preliminary analysis revealed there was a failure in the protection system, and vegetation was discovered on a transmission line between the barrio of Cambalache and municipality of Manatí.

The company said in a statement: "This sequence of failures triggered a chain of events that resulted in an island-wide outage,. This event once again highlights the fragility of the electrical system, something LUMA has pointed out since the beginning of its operations."

The company noted that one of the island's power plants went online at around 3 p.m., which "represents a key step towards the system's recovery." It estimated that it will take between 48 and 72 hours for service to be restored for 90% of customers. The island-wide blackout hit just days ahead of Easter weekend — a majority of the territory's population identifies as Catholic, and the island observes the holiday all week.