Blackouts plague Puerto Rico days after storm
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — Half of Puerto Rico is without power more than five days after Hurricane Fiona struck — including an entire town where not a single work crew has arrived.
Many on the U.S. territory are angry and incredulous, and calls are growing for the ouster of the island’s private electricity transmission and distribution company.
Fuel disruptions are worsening the situation, forcing grocery stores, gas stations and other businesses to close and leaving apartment buildings in the dark because there is no diesel for generators.
Many are questioning why it is taking so long to restore power since Fiona was a Category 1 storm that did not affect the entire island, and whose rain — not wind — inflicted the greatest damage.
“It’s not normal,” said Marcel Castro-Sitiriche, an electrical engineering professor at the University of Puerto Rico in Mayaguez. “They have not given a convincing explanation of what the problem is.”
He noted that Puerto Rico’s Electric Power Authority and Luma, a private company that took over the power transmission and distribution last year, also have not released basic information such as details of the damage to the electricity grid.
Luma has said Fiona’s floods left several substations underwater and inaccessible, and it has insisted it doesn’t need more personnel.
The lack of power has prompted at least two mayors to activate their own repair teams, and several other town leaders are calling for answers on why Luma crews have not reconnected homes and key infrastructure.
“They haven’t even arrived here,” said Yasmín Allende, municipal administrator for Hormigueros, a town in western Puerto Rico that is home to more than 15,600 people, many of them elderly.
She said town officials have provided a list of downed transformers and power lines as well as the exact location of dozens of damaged electric posts. They have even cleared openings around damaged spots to ensure that electricity could be restored as soon as possible, she said.
The island’s power grid was already crumbling when a powerful Hurricane Maria razed the system in 2017. Reconstruction of the grid had barely started when Hurricane Fiona hit last Sunday.
In the first days following Fiona, Luma officials and Gov. Pedro Pierluisi promised that the vast majority of customers would soon have their electricity back. But as of late Friday, more than 40 percent of 1.47 million customers were still in the dark.
Neither Luma nor Puerto Rico’s power generating utility have said when electricity will be restored. They have said only that hospitals and other critical infrastructure are their priority.