Puerto Rico’s rough road to recovery
Still reeling from Irma, debt-ridden island faces a mountain of need after being razed by Hurricane Maria
ASAN JUAN, Puerto Rico day after Hurricane Maria razed Puerto Rico, its ferocious winds smashing houses, hotels, cellphone towers and the island’s entire electrical grid, the fear and frustration were pervasive Thursday.
Power was out everywhere. Cellphones were mostly useless, forcing panicked residents to scramble for news from far-flung relatives. Much of the island’s water was undrinkable. Roads were carpeted in debris. And still the full scope of the damage was unknown. By day’s end, Puerto Rico’s governor, Ricardo Rosselló, said there had been no contact with officials in 85 percent of the island.
For Puerto Rico, long crippled by enormous debt and an essentially bankrupt financial system, the road to recovery just went from long to seemingly endless. Still reeling from Hurricane Irma, which knocked out 70 percent of the power when it grazed the island two weeks ago, it faces a mountain of need in the coming months just as the federal government is stretched to the limit grappling with the destruction left by Hurricanes Harvey and Irma.
And unlike Texas and Florida, politically powerful states on the mainland, Puerto Rico is an impoverished, Spanish-speaking commonwealth. It is an island to boot, making aid delivery all the more cumbersome and expensive.
“The irony is we’re in crisis here, and go figure, a phenomenon like this one comes to destroy us,” said Edwin Serrano, 37, a construction worker who lives in the Old San Juan district. “This is going to be a long haul.”
On Thursday, the island was declared a federal disaster zone, freeing up federal emergency money. Re-establishing communications is a priority, the governor said, although the task would be gargantuan. The Federal Communications Commission estimated Thursday that Puerto Rico had lost 95 percent of its wireless cell sites.
Complicating Puerto Rico’s recovery is the island’s devastated economy. The island has been mired in a deep recession for more than a decade and carries $74 billion in debt. With no way of repaying it, Puerto Rico declared a form of bankruptcy in May, the first time in history that an American state or territory had taken the extraordinary measure. The island’s finances are also being overseen by a federal control board.
If there is anything promising it is that, as a U.S. territory, Puerto Rico can receive money from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. That money is expected to provide the bulk of what Puerto Rico needs to rebuild critical infrastructure, which had been neglected and crumbling well before the hurricane, as well as houses and buildings. The hope now is that, as a result of disaster aid, Puerto Rico can modernize its electrical grid, roads and bridges. It is a goal the federal government shares. “At least 75 percent of the recovery money is going to come from FEMA,” said David Merrick, director of the Emergency Management and Homeland Security program at Florida State University. “It becomes ‘how do I build back in a way that’s better.’ This is the time, unfortunately, to make those changes and not just blind ducttape everything back together the way it was.”
Piecing together Puerto Rico will be especially hard — and expensive — because it is an island. Everything must be flown or shipped in, requiring more time and money than if goods could be trucked in. The high uninsured or underinsured rate in Puerto Rico will also slow the process.
Daily life will soon grow almost intolerable for all and dangerous for some, like the older and frail. Many parts of the hot and humid island are expected to go months without electricity, the governor said. Cooking will be onerous. Hot showers will be a memory. In some regions, clean water will be hard to access.
Ricardo Ramos, the director of the beleaguered government-owned Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, told CNN on Thursday that the island’s power infrastructure had been basically “destroyed” and will take months to come back.
Residents, Ramos said, would need to change the way they cook and cool off. For entertainment, old-school would be the best approach, he said. “It’s a good time for dads to buy a ball and a glove and change the way you entertain your children.”
But with many businesses blown away, the post-storm landscape is expected to drive even more people out of Puerto Rico and into the arms of relatives and friends on the mainland, a scenario that will exacerbate the ongoing brain drain and further shrink the island’s tax base.
Rep. Darren Soto, whose district includes Orlando, Fla., where many Puerto Ricans have landed as part of the island’s exodus, said he is talking with local and state officials to ready schools and assistance offices.