Puerto Rico returns to power grid
ADJUNTAS, Puerto Rico — 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 U.S. 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-toreach areas. Repair crews sometimes are forced to dig holes by hand and scale down steep mountainsides to reach damaged light posts. Electrical poles have to be ferried in oneby-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 energized.
And even as TVs glow into the night and people such as 20-year-old delivery man Steven Vilella once again savor favorite foods such as 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 Robles, 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 neighbor 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 of hours each day.
Puerto Rico’s electrical grid is still shaky after Hurricane Irma brushed past the island as a Category 5 storm last Sept. 6 and then Hurricane Maria made a direct hit as a Category 4 storm two weeks later, damaging up to 75 percent of transmission lines.
More than 52,000 power poles have been installed and thousands of miles of cable secured, with some 180 generators still providing power at key locations. But Gov. Ricardo Rossello warns there is no backup system yet in case the power goes out again, which it did for up to 47,000 customers when the remnants of what was once Tropical Storm Beryl lashed Puerto Rico with rain and wind in early July.
A further complication is the lack of leadership at Puerto Rico’s Electric Power Authority, which has seen four directors since Maria, the most recent one lasting only a day in the job.
The turnover comes as federal and local officials try to strengthen the power grid in the middle of a new hurricane season and as Puerto Rico’s government prepares to privatize the generation of electricity and award concessions for transmission and distribution.