Hurricane Maria causes largest blackout in US history

More than a month after Hurricane Maria wrecked Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands — millions of residents still lack electricity, making it the largest blackout in American history, a report says.

The hurricane caused a total loss of 1.25 billion hours of electricity for Americans, an analysis by the Rhodium Group published Thursday says.

The group used data the territories of Puerto Rico, St. Criox, St. Thomas and St. John submitted to the Department of Energy.

Rhodium Group analyzed previous natural disasters, including Hurricane Katrina, Rita, and others, that have caused blackouts.

“We can find no event in recorded U.S. history where there were as many people without power for as long as has occurred over the past month in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands,” the report says.

Hurricane Georges, which also struck Puerto Rico in 1998 and Hurricane Sandy in 2012, fall behind Maria for the top slot in power outage, according to the report.

Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rosselló said about 95% the island’s power could be restored by December 15. Whitefish Energy — a firm with ties to the Trump administration — was awarded a $300 million contract to help repair the island’s electrical grid, which is raising some eyebrows on Capitol Hill over its transparency.

The group says the number of hours lost is expected to rise.

“Maria will have resulted in more than 2 billion lost customer hours in total,” the report says. “That’s three times the impact of Hurricane Sandy or the 2003 Northeast Blackout. It’s more than all U.S. outages between January 1, 2013, and August 31, 2017, combined.”