Puerto Rico governor plans to restore 95% of power by December – By Nicole Chavez (cnn.com) / Oct 15 2017
(CNN)Puerto Rico Governor Ricardo Rosselló said he plans to restore power to 95% of the island’s energy grid by December after Hurricane Maria devastated the infrastructure of the US territory.
The entire system crashed when Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico nearly a month ago, leaving more than 3 million American citizens without power.
As of Sunday, 85% of the island still had no electricity. Rosselló set a goal to restore power by December 15.
“This is an aggressive agenda but we cannot be soft of passive in the face of Puerto Rico’s challenges,” Rosselló said. “We are going to need all hands on deck.”
During a news conference Saturday, Rosselló said his goal is to have 30% of the island’s power restored by the end of the month. Then, the target would be to restore 50% by November 15 and 80% by December 1.
Authorities had estimated it could take them between six months to a year to restore power.
“Our goal as government is to give Puerto Ricans access to electricity with speed and efficiency,” he tweeted.
The US Army Corps of Engineers would play a key role to make the plan a reality because they have the resources and would hire the manpower that the island’s agencies lack, the governor said.
The Corps have been working on the island for a few weeks after FEMA tasked them with helping rebuild the island’s infrastructure. They have been installing power generators, temporary roofs and reinstalling transmission lines.
The governor’s announcement comes after a failure in the “central system” caused the percentage of customers with power to go down Friday.
Living without power
Puerto Ricans have been depending heavily on generators. They use them to power lifesaving machines like ventilators and dialysis equipment, as well as to keep fans, air conditioners and stoves functioning.
They made lifestyle changes. Credit and debit cards are useless. ATMs are out. No Internet, television or air conditioning. Dead cellphone batteries. Everything from the water supply to sewage treatment to the preservation of food is threatened.
In the immediate aftermath of the hurricane, a shortage of fuel made things worse.
People would line up for hours at gas stations hoping to get a few gallons for their generators. Patients at a children’s hospital in San Juan were in danger due to a diesel shortage.
Now, big-stores and restaurants have reopened because they are powered by generators. But Rosselló said he knows generators are just a temporary fix and eventually would also need repairs.
Power woes
Puerto Rico’s power grid was a mess well before the storm.
The island’s electric utility filed for bankruptcy in July and officials had said the system was “vulnerable and fragile,” and in urgent need of maintenance.
Part of the problem was the shortage of employees. Many workers recently retired or left their jobs for better prospects on the US mainland, Ricardo Ramos Rodríguez, the director of Puerto Rico’s power utility told CNN affiliate WAPA.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/10/15/us/puerto-rico-governor-update/index.html
PB/TK – Army Corps of Engineers employees locals to help get PR’s infrastructure back up, in turn that’s money in someone’s pocket to spend at local stores, which puts money in someone else’s pocket to hire and buy supplies and so on. It might help PR’s massive debt but without help from the US, we’ll end up letting 3 million Americans stay in the dark.
