SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — An excavator accidentally hit a transmission line, officials say, taking out power to most of the island of Puerto Rico on Wednesday as the territory continues to struggle with power outages in the wake of Hurricane Maria.

It was the second widespread power outage on the island in a week.

Officials said Wednesday's outage to the Electric Power Authority's 1.4 million customers could last 24 to 36 hours.

"This is too much," Luis Oscar Rivera said to the Associated Press. The 42-year-old computer technician just got normal power back at his house less than two months ago. "It’s like the first day of Maria all over again."

The power company own customer service center was out of service, it said, asking people to go online or use the phone.

At about 11 a.m., the official Twitter account for San Juan's airport tweeted that the facility was operating on generator power. No delays or cancellations were reported yet.

The island has suffered an unstable power grid since the September 2017 hurricane.

Just last week, about 870,000 electricity customers across Puerto Rico were left without power after a tree fell on the main line that supplies power to San Juan and other nearby areas, according to the island's Electric Power Authority. That outage forced the island's main public hospital and airport to switch to backup generators.

The storm has caused more than 3.4 billion hours of electricity outage time in Puerto Rico, making it the second largest blackout in the world, according to a report published by economic research firm Rhodium Group. It trails only the outage time caused by Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines in 2013.

Puerto Rico's power company is $14 billion in debt and relies on old infrastructure.

Information from the Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Power outages, nightmare driving conditions, families split apart. Six months after Hurricane Maria ravaged Puerto Rico, the island still has a long road to recovery. But during our four-day trip to the U.S. territory, there was one common theme: the islanders' resilient spirit.

Come with us as we travel from Arecibo to Ponce to Bacardi (of the rum fame) and show you what life is like now in Puerto Rico.