Corps leaving with recovery unfinished
The Army Corps of Engineers is ending its work to rebuild Puerto Rico’s electric grid, despite residents’ fears that the island’s government won’t be able to restore power on its own to more than 16,000 people who remain blacked out eight months after Hurricane Maria.
The federal agency will keep operating more than 700 generators on the island, including three “mega generators” supplementing Puerto Rico’s aging and storm-damaged power plants. But on Friday the restoration of thousands of miles of downed power lines will be handed back to the U.S. territory’s bankrupt public utility, the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, or PREPA.
The Corps took over power restoration efforts in Puerto Rico on Sept. 30 after PREPA failed to call in mainland utility companies under a disaster response plan known as mutual aid, in which power companies from around the U.S. send staff to help stricken areas.
Puerto Rican officials said 98.86 percent of PREPA’s customers had electricity Thursday, but 16,723 remained without power as the longest blackout in U.S. history continued.
Trump administration officials say a big federal presence is no longer needed to hook up the relatively few remaining connections in the often-remote areas where people are still without power. But many people on and off the island are dissatisfied by the decision to pull out the Corps without Puerto Rico’s power fully restored.
“It’s not in our culture to walk away from a mission when it hasn’t been fully accomplished, but we follow orders,” Charles Alexander, the Corps’ director for contingency operations, told the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee at a May 8 hearing.
The Corps has operated under the orders of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which says it has deferred to Gov. Ricardo Rossello’s requests on the extent and duration of federal assistance to Puerto Rico.
FEMA on Thursday indefinitely extended the Corps’ power generation mission but did not extend the grid repair work because Rossello did not request that.
Most of those still without power live in the town of Yabucoa, which was the first place in Puerto Rico struck by Hurricane Maria on Sept. 20.
Alberto Rodriguez, a 65-year-old retiree, has solar panels and a diesel generator supplying power to the house where he takes care of his wife, who is confined to bed after suffering a stroke a month after the hurricane.