Puerto Ricans cheer return of electricity
Nearly a year after hurricane, lights slowly coming on for hundreds of homes and offices
It was finally a night to celebrate in this village tucked into the mountains of central Puerto Rico.
People pressed TV remote buttons, clicked on fans and plugged in refrigerators as electricity again flowed into homes that had been without power since two major hurricanes devastated the US territory nearly a year ago.
Lights are slowly coming on for the more than 950 homes and businesses across Puerto Rico that remain without power in hard-to-reach areas. Repair crews are sometimes forced to dig holes by hand and scale down steep mountainsides to reach damaged light posts. Electrical poles have to be ferried in one-by-one via helicopter.
It is slow work, and it has stretched nearly two months past the date when officials had promised that everyone in Puerto Rico would be energised.
‘No money left here’
And even as TVs glow into the night and people like 20-yearold delivery man Steven Vilella once again savour favourite foods like shrimp and Rocky Road ice cream, many fear their newly returned normality could be short-lived. Turmoil at the island’s power company and recent winds and rains that knocked out electricity to tens of thousands of people at the start of the new hurricane season have them worried.
“If another storm comes through, we’re going to die. There’s no money left here,” said 66-year-old Marta Bermudez, who still has a blue tarp over her rusting zinc roof. She doesn’t believe the government has enough resources to properly rebuild the power grid amid an 11-year-old recession.
Still, after power was restored to her house on Friday, she celebrated no longer having to eat a diet of mostly rice, bananas and soup or wash clothes by hand in a sink that she and her husband found on the street after Hurricane Irma.
The only power they had for 10 months was courtesy of a neighbour who threw over a thin yellow extension cord connected to his generator that provided just enough power to light one bulb in her kitchen and another in her living room for a couple hours each day.
Puerto Rico’s electrical grid is still shaky after Hurricane Irma brushed past the island as a Category 5 storm last September 6 and then Hurricane Maria made a direct hit as a Category 4 storm two weeks later, damaging up to 75 per cent of transmission lines. More than 52,000 power poles have been installed and thousands of kilometres of cable secured.
Turmoil at the island’s power company and recent winds and rains that knocked out electricity to tens of thousands of people at the start of the new hurricane season have them worried.