Fire at the Monacillos substation in San Juan caused a blackout in several sectors of Puerto Rico

(CNN Spanish) – A fire in a transformer in the Monacillo substation, in San Juan, generated a significant interruption in the electricity service of Puerto Rico this Thursday, confirmed LUMA Energy, a company that took over the transmission and distribution of electricity in the Island.

The company indicated through its Twitter account that “personnel from the Puerto Rico Police, Fire Department and Medical Emergencies are at the scene. No injuries have been reported”.

The Governor of Puerto Rico, Pedro Pierluisi, he said through his Twitter account that “all the resources of the government of Puerto Rico are available to handle the emergency caused by the fire at the Monacillos substation in Río Piedras.”

“The priority has to be to re-establish service as soon as possible and our people can rest assured that we are ensuring that this is the case. At the same time, as we have the results of the investigations related to the cause of this incident, whoever is responsible for it will have to respond to the People of Puerto Rico, “he added.

LUMA Energy indicated that work to restore electricity service in the affected areas will continue overnight.

Attack on the electricity company website

The fire occurred on the same day as an attack on the website for the company’s customers.

In a press release, LUMA Energy said it was the victim of a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack. In these attacks massive amounts of traffic are deliberately sent to a page in an attempt to collapse it.

«The DDoS attack was identified and has been emitting 2 million visits per second. As a result, many customers may have had difficulty accessing information related to their account. ” LUMA said in a statement.

There was no immediate indication that there was a connection between the attack on the website and the substation fire. «The attack has been reported to the relevant authorities and LUMA awaits the results of a
ongoing investigation, ”the company said.

With information from Andy Rose.