Half of Puerto Rico was without power on Saturday, five days after Hurricane Fiona hit, including an entire population that has not been reached by a single repair crew.
Many residents of the US territory are furious and in disbelief. Calls are mounting for the island’s private electricity transmission and distribution company to be suspended.
Fuel shortages are making the situation worse, forcing grocery stores, gas stations and other businesses to close while residential buildings go dark from lack of diesel for generators.
Many residents question why it’s taking so long to restore power if Fiona was a Category 1 hurricane that didn’t affect the entire island and whose rains, not winds, caused the most damage.
“It’s not normal,” said Marcel Castro-Sitiriche, a professor of electrical engineering at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez. “They haven’t given a convincing explanation of what the problem is.”
Castro stressed that the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority and Luma, a private company that took over the transmission and distribution of energy on the island last year, have also not made public certain basic information, such as details of the damage suffered by the network. electrical.
“We don’t know how much damage was done yet,” he said, adding that he was worried and surprised that Luma had not mobilized additional teams to reinforce the manpower it already had on the island.
Luma has indicated that the flooding caused by Fiona submerged several substations, cutting off access, and has insisted that he does not need more staff.
“We have all the resources that we think we need,” said Daniel Hernández, a Luma engineer.
The lack of electricity has prompted at least one mayor to put his own repair crews to work. Several municipal leaders are demanding answers as to why the concessionaire’s crews have not reconnected homes and key infrastructure to the grid.
“They haven’t even gotten here,” lamented Yasmín Allende, municipal administrator of Hormigueros, a city in western Puerto Rico with more than 15,600 inhabitants, many of them elderly.
Municipal officials have provided a list of downed transformers and power lines, as well as the exact location of dozens of damaged power poles, he explained. They have even opened clearings around the affected areas to ensure power can be restored as soon as possible, she added.
“Everything is ready for them to come and do their job,” Allende said. “All they have to do is show up.”
Elizabeth González, who lives in Hormigueros, said that on Friday she had to throw away two bags of meat and that she is having trouble buying more gasoline for her generator despite the fact that her husband, who has cancer, depends on him.
González said she was fed up with the current state of the Puerto Rican power grid.
“It does not work, as simple as that,” he denounced. “If a hurricane comes, if there is some rain, any gust of wind, the light quickly takes away.”
The island’s power grid was already struggling due to austerity measures, aging infrastructure and lack of maintenance when powerful Hurricane Maria swept through the system in 2017. Grid rebuilding had barely begun when Fiona made landfall on Thursday. Last Sunday.
In the first days after the passage of the meteor, those responsible for Luma and the governor, Pedro Pierluisi, promised that the vast majority of customers would soon have electricity again, but as of Friday night, more than 40% of their 1 .47 million affiliates remained in the dark.
In addition, 27% of the 1.3mn water and sewer service clients did not have running water, in part because pumps rely on electricity and not all have standby generators.
Neither Luma nor the Puerto Rico electric company have given a date for the restoration of service in the most affected areas. They only stated that their priority is hospitals and other critical infrastructure works.
The situation has outraged many Puerto Ricans, including local government officials.
“I am not going to allow excuses,” said Alexander Burgos, mayor of the mountainous town of Ciales, in the center of the island. “In our town the lines are up, there are no poles in the ground and we are ready to receive the service.”
Edward O’Neill, mayor of the northern town of Guaynabo, tweeted that Luma’s “poor performance” was “unacceptable.”
O’Neill, who worked for both the Puerto Rican power company and Luma, explained that his municipality has compiled all the necessary information to help operators restore service, but they have not seen any results.
In Bayamón, also in the north, its mayor, Ramón Luis Rivera, got tired of waiting and hired independent repair teams that began work on Friday afternoon, even though they were not handling live cables. Aguadilla Mayor Julio Roldán reported that he was doing the same in his northwestern coastal city. “We depend on other people to be able to live… We get tired,” he said.
The mayor of the central mountain town of Utuado said no one in his municipality of 28,000 people had electricity and accused Luma of making residents suffer unnecessarily. The mayor of the western town of Moca echoed those comments, stating that “Luma has not wanted to take responsibility for him.”
Cathy Kunkel, an energy and financial analyst in Puerto Rico, expressed surprise that power has not yet returned to areas where Fiona wreaked little havoc, including the capital, San Juan.
In addition, he questioned that Luma had not hired hundreds of experienced technicians who worked with the Puerto Rican Electric Power Authority before the private company took over transmission and distribution in June 2021.
“We have this absurdly frustrating situation,” he lamented. “The old system is poorly maintained. They really want people who know how to work in this particular system.”
The lack of electricity has been linked to several deaths.
Authorities say a 70-year-old man was burned to death while trying to fill his generator, which was running, with gasoline. Another 78-year-old lost his life after inhaling the toxic gases of his. In addition, police reported Friday that a 72-year-old man and a 93-year-old woman died after their house caught fire from using candles to light their home.
For Castro-Sitiriche, the professor of Electrical Engineering, the culprits are the government of Puerto Rico, Luma and the Electric Power Authority.
“It’s a shared disaster,” he said, adding that Fiona was a wake-up call and that more people need to get connected to solar power. “It’s a shame that the government hasn’t done it to save lives.”
