1.4 million without power on Puerto Rico

April 18, 2018 12:43 PM

An island-wide blackout hit Puerto Rico on Wednesday, nearly seven months after Hurricane Maria. It's the second major outage in less than a week, with the previous one affecting some 840,000 customers. "This is too much," said Luis Oscar Rivera, a 42-year-old computer technician who just got normal power back at his house less than two months ago. "It's like the first day of Maria all over again."
posted by marteki (21 comments total)

The Economist this week has a good article on how the federal government has failed its citizens in Puerto Rico.

Digging by Politico suggests the federal government sent 30,000 relief workers to Houston within nine days of its hurricane; it sent 10,000 to Puerto Rico. Over the same period, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) approved payments of $142m to victims of Harvey, and $6m to victims of Maria. Ms Meléndez says it was two weeks before she heard from FEMA, and two months before the Army Corps of Engineers started dispensing tarpaulins to patch up Ponce’s 49,000 damaged houses. ...

And though many thousands of Puerto Ricans have fought and died in America’s armed forces, they still tend to cherish the Puerto Rican Olympic team and other tokens of national identity. A class of 30 political science students, at the University of Puerto Rico’s campus in the south-east city of Humacao, said they had nothing particularly against America; it just wasn’t their country.

BTW what was the final result of the mess that came out of Whitefish getting some sweet contract they couldn't possibly deliver on to fix Puerto Rico's power grid? They got fired, right? Is there an investigation into the specific source of corruption that got them hired in the first place?
posted by Nelson at 12:48 PM on April 18, 2018 [10 favorites]

Hasn't been fixed by blockchain millionaires yet? Huh.
posted by clawsoon at 12:49 PM on April 18, 2018

Brutal, the electric network is operating in emergency mode, all the time?

On the mainland, transmission networks are always run so that they can absorb failure of any one transmission line (e.g. the one the excavator hit), often two transmission lines (e.g. if they are attached to the same towers). If a transmission operator gets to the point where they can't operate "n-1", that is exceptional and carries a LOT of paperwork and regulatory penalties.

What a disgrace. How is that Whitefish no-bid contract working out, I wonder.
posted by anthill at 12:57 PM on April 18, 2018 [5 favorites]

Thank you for this timely and important reminder. Compared to the other natural disasters of recent years, the lack of federal aid to Puerto Rico is scandalous. Off to call my senators and congresswoman now.
posted by dancing_angel at 12:58 PM on April 18, 2018 [6 favorites]

the federal government sent 30,000 relief workers to Houston within nine days of its hurricane; it sent 10,000 to Puerto Rico

At first I thought "well, I know Houston is a pretty big city, so maybe it's a population size thing". Nope, the entire Houston metro area's population is 6.3 million, and Puerto Rico's was 3.3 million, at least before before the post-hurricane wave of migration to the mainland. So Houston got considerably more relief workers, even on a generous per-capita basis.
posted by jedicus at 12:59 PM on April 18, 2018 [3 favorites]

From Puerto Rico. Hot day. My office is miserable. Our back-up generator doesn't cover air conditioning to my office.
Going home will be the same. I bought a generator after Maria, but it runs on propane (I have one tank) will probably make it useful for only hours. There will likely be problems finding refills.

The statement of 24 to 36 hours is Puerto Rican talk for: we really don't know. We'll get back to you mañana.

Also Houston people could drive to escape the crisis (if they had the resources and/or family nearby). We can't.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 1:36 PM on April 18, 2018 [61 favorites]

Can we not say “customers”? Can we say “people”?
posted by synecdoche at 1:42 PM on April 18, 2018 [17 favorites]

Power companies have "customers", not "people". Electric Power Authority isn't likely to know how many actual people are involved at each service address.
posted by sideshow at 2:27 PM on April 18, 2018 [4 favorites]

The power company also has a "monopoly" on providing electricity to the "people" in Puerto Rico.

I'm really struck by dances_with_sneetches' comment about not being able to drive to escape.
posted by Nelson at 2:31 PM on April 18, 2018 [7 favorites]

This post links to a good overall update on how Puerto Rico has been doing lately.
posted by aniola at 3:54 PM on April 18, 2018 [2 favorites]

Thank you for posting this. Puerto Ricans are US Citizens. This should be Trump's Katrina (in terms of political fallout) but it won't be.
posted by mrmurbles at 8:29 PM on April 18, 2018 [7 favorites]

Please give PR actual representation, Dems.
posted by benzenedream at 9:10 PM on April 18, 2018 [8 favorites]

Thank you for posting. Called my reps. I don’t know what else to do but, I did that.
posted by greermahoney at 1:04 AM on April 19, 2018 [1 favorite]

Electricity came back for my house at about midnight.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 3:28 AM on April 19, 2018 [7 favorites]

The Whitefish contract did get canceled, but that didn't stop them from getting paid almost $40 million, and trying to bill for more. And the extremely troubled public utility, which the governor wants to privatize, apparently hasn't even asked FEMA for reimbursement.
posted by mubba at 8:55 AM on April 19, 2018

Electricity went down twice this morning for brief intervals. I'm not saying that is island-wide, just my experience in my office.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 9:32 AM on April 19, 2018

I was interested to note that the Major League Baseball game scheduled yesterday went off without a hitch. Clearly the MLB and broadcast TV planned for the likelihood of power loss, which is another commentary on the ability of those with resources to work around the situation.
posted by wnissen at 11:53 AM on April 19, 2018 [2 favorites]

1.4 million is less than half the island population. I would guess that the MLB game was in the lucky half.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 1:54 PM on April 19, 2018

From a colleague in Puerto Rico: it looks like it will be "up to 36 hours in the dark" for some poor souls. (Some, of course, still don't have power back at all post-Maria.) ... Oddly, the same man with the same back-hoe that caused yesterday's problem, also blacked out San Juan a week or so ago! I gather he has actually been fired this time.
posted by RedOrGreen at 1:59 PM on April 19, 2018

That's 1.4 million customers (IE: meters); most of those customers will represent more than one person (or less than I guess in the case of business customers).
posted by Mitheral at 7:28 PM on April 19, 2018 [1 favorite]

Wall Street Is Trying to Embezzle Puerto Rico’s Hurricane-Relief Money. Puerto Rico’s federal relief funds are being earmarked for bondholders.
posted by homunculus at 9:31 PM on April 19, 2018 [1 favorite]