SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Power was restored to more than 98% of customers Friday after an island-wide blackout hit Puerto earlier this week, authorities said.
More than 1.45 million customers had electricity less than 48 hours after the outage hit, according to Luma Energy, which oversees the transmission and distribution of power on the island.
Luma warned that “some customers may continue to experience temporary outages due to limited generation.”
Gov. Jenniffer González said that all those affected by the blackout had power restored, and that the more than 21,400 customers without electricity on Friday was a result of other unidentified issues.
“Obviously, Luma still has work to do,” she said. “It is a shame for our people ... that we have such an insufficient, mediocre system.”
Normally, a couple thousand customers are temporarily without power every week in Puerto Rico for various reasons.
González noted that more than 98% of customers also had water.
“We have overcome, thank God, a great crisis this week,” she said.
The blackout that hit Wednesday afternoon occurred after a transmission line failed and then caused generators across the island to protectively shut down, officials have said. It also left more than 400,000 customers without water at the time.
It wasn’t immediately clear what caused the failure, although authorities are investigating whether a series of breakers failed or if overgrown vegetation is to blame.
González said she expected to receive a preliminary report in upcoming days.
It’s the second massive blackout to hit Puerto Rico in less than four months. The previous one happened on New Year’s Eve.
Nurys Perez, owner of Nurys Salon, styles a client's hair on the sidewalk outside her shop during a blackout in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Thursday, April 17, 2025. (AP Photo/Alejandro Granadillo)
Generators line the sidewalk of a commercial street in Barrio Obrero as shops try to remain open during a prolonged power outage in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Thursday, April 17, 2025. (AP Photo/Alejandro Granadillo)
Nurys Perez moves a generator into place to power her beauty salon during a blackout in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Thursday, April 17, 2025. (AP Photo/Alejandro Granadillo)
DENVER (AP) — A soldier present at an after-hours nightclub where more than 100 immigrants suspected of being in the U.S. illegally were taken into custody appeared in court Thursday to face charges that he distributed cocaine.
Staff Sgt. Juan Gabriel Orona-Rodriguez, who is assigned to Fort Carson, an Army post near the illegal club in Colorado Springs, was arrested Wednesday evening, the FBI said.
He allegedly sold cocaine to an undercover agent of the Drug Enforcement Administration days before the raid and is accused of working with others to distribute the drug since around September, according to his arrest affidavit.
Orona-Rodriguez — a member of the 1st Stryker Brigade Combat Team in the 4th Infantry Division — was dressed in camouflage pants and a khaki T-shirt and held court documents in his handcuffed hands during his brief court hearing. He listened as the magistrate judge explained his rights and agreed to appoint a public defender to represent him.
At the request of Assistant U.S. Attorney Garreth Winstead, Orona-Rodriguez will continue to be held until a hearing to discuss his detention on Tuesday. His lawyer, Josh Lilley, did not address the allegations against him during the hearing and declined to comment after the hearing, citing the public defenders' policy against speaking to the media.
More than 300 law enforcement officers and officials from multiple agencies participated in Sunday’s operation at the nightclub, which had been under investigation for months, said Jonathan Pullen, special agent in charge of the DEA’s Rocky Mountain Division.
Cocaine was among the drugs found, Pullen said at a news conference in Colorado Springs, whose leaders have declared that it is not a “sanctuary city” for migrants.
Orona-Rodriquez was one of about 17 active-duty U.S. Army service members who were at the club, known as Warike, when it was raided early Sunday, the affidavit said.
He appears to have held a leadership role in a business that provides armed security at nightclubs, including at Warike, according to the document. However, it did not say whether he was working security there at the time of the raid. It notes that he had been warned by his commanding officer this spring that he could not work for the security company.
According to the arrest affidavit, police received 911 calls related to the club “citing a wide variety of alleged crimes, including weapons violations, assault, narcotics, and other violent crime.”
Two people wanted in connection with criminal misdemeanor cases were also arrested during the raid, Colorado Springs police said.
Colorado Springs mayor Yemi Mobolade, a political independent and Nigerian immigrant, has expressed support for the operation, which he said was the “result of clear evidence of serious criminal conduct.”
“Our residents deserve to live in a city where the rule of law is upheld and where illegal behavior is met with firm and decisive action,” he said in a statement.
President Donald Trump posted a link to the DEA video of the raid on his social media site, Truth Social. “A big Raid last night on some of the worst people illegally in our Country — Drug Dealers, Murderers, and other Violent Criminals, of all shapes and sizes,” the president wrote.
Rodriguez received more than a dozen Army awards during his almost nine years in service, including an Army Commendation Medal with combat device, which is earned during a deployment where the soldier was “performing meritoriously under the most arduous combat conditions,” according to Army descriptions of the award.
Of the 17 soldiers who were at the venue at the time of the raid, 16 were patrons and one was working there in a security role, a U.S. official said on the condition of anonymity to provide details not yet made public. Sixteen of the soldiers there were assigned to Fort Carson, the official did not know where the seventeenth was assigned.
Investigators suspect Orona-Rodriguez was getting cocaine from an unidentified Mexican citizen who is “unlawfully present in the United States without admission,” according to the affidavit.
Orona-Rodriquez was charged with distributing cocaine and other charges.
Associated Press writer Tara Copp in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report.
In this image taken from video released by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, officers stop a patron from a nightclub where a raid occurred Sunday, April 27, 2025, in Colorado Springs, Colo. (U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration via AP)
In this image taken from video released by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, a law enforcement officer with a weapon drawn is shown at a nightclub where a raid occurred Sunday, April 27, 2025, in Colorado Springs, Colo. (U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration via AP)
