Now to the aftermath of Hurricane Fiona, and it's lasting impact
on Puerto Rico More than a week after the storm hit the island is
an island electric utility, says more than two thirds of its customers.
Power has now been restored. But as Laura Barone Lopez reports for
the hundreds of thousands still in the dark patience is wearing thin.
The hum of generators and the remains of people's lives stacked outside
their homes filled the streets of Yoko in southwest Puerto Rico.
On Monday, eight days after Hurricane Fiona made landfall.
We spent a week without water or power. The authorities haven't done
anything for us. We are in rough shape. We lost everything.
That sense of desperation was also evident in the long lines at gas
stations across the island.
People continue to Philip cans to feel generators powering their
lights, water pumps, refrigerators and more.
My generator and my fridge are broken. Many things broke down to
throw away over 100 pesos and food yesterday. That's really awful.
And there's growing anger with the island's power operator, Luna
Energy for moving slowly to restore power to the hundreds of thousands
of people still in the dark. You know how this goes. There's no money
and what happens to us? What happens with Louima? What happens with
the governor? They do nothing. We are abandoned here. We don't even
have water. They don't send water.
Torn neighborhoods. Nothing
Fiona hit five years after Hurricane Maria, a Category five storm
with winds over 100
MPH, killing thousands.
Fiona was just a category one storm, but it's flooding has devastated
the island.
A bridge is ruining homes and cars and initially leaving more than
a million Americans without electricity.
In Caguas in central Puerto Rico, Maria Nieves Martinez showed us
around her house as she cleaned up what was left.
Everything got ruined. I don't have the boxes to throw them away
because everything got ruined. All of this is garbage. Even this
new air conditioner we bought that we were going to install got damaged.
Everything got wet. This was too much because of the continued blackouts,
Martinez said her groceries have gone bad multiple times, and the
power failures are hurting the island's most vulnerable residents,
too.
I don't mean more
right now. On the eighth day, we still have hospitals without light
without electricity. The running on a generator. Rivera is a doctoral
candidate in public health at the University of Puerto Rico. The
island's healthcare had already been weakened by hurricanes Irma
and Maria. Recent earthquakes and the covid pandemic.
And now, Rivera says many hospitals are relying on generators.
Rico, Puerto Rico, There are more than 60 hospitals centers were
thousands of lives depend on or connected to a ventilator or depend
on medication that I'll get ruined due to the lack of electricity
or another service. For example, the dialysis centers. People who
depend on the dialysis process depends entirely on electricity. If
there's no electricity, that person can die for decades, Puerto Rico's
power grid was run by state controlled prepper, whose infrastructure
was badly down.
Imaged by Maria
Then, in June of last year, a private consortium of American and
Canadian companies called Loma took over operations and maintenance.
Nothing happened improve.
And we are paying a very expensive service. We are one of the most
expensive services and the United States Israel. Melinda's. Ayala
is a historian and anthropologist in San Juan. Before Fiona even
hit, he says that under loom a his electric bill nearly tripled this
year and blackouts were frequent. He blames decades of corruption
and negligence, including with Prepa for the problems today.
When the government give the contract to Loma. It was to improve.
The electricity services and to upgrade it to I mean electricity
infrastructure of Puerto Rico is
Super old. I mean, when the corporate engineers came over here after
Maria, they found that they were equipment of the 19 forties.
You know, this is the level of how old and the negligence from the
government.
On the electoral infrastructure in Puerto Rico.
Since Maria the federal government has allocated nearly 13 billion
for rebuilding the grid and public utilities, But so far less than
half of that has been spent by loom A and prepa.
It expects up to 91% of customers to have power by Friday. If there's
enough capacity. Still, many in Puerto Rico expects a long road to
recovery into a more dependable power grid.