CABO ROJO, Puerto Rico — Driving down the winding roads of a mountain town Saturday night, Hevel Vélez Luciano, 25, looked ahead and took a deep breath. Beyond the mountain was a small cluster of lights in the distance, the only place in Cabo Rojo that had electricity.
Beyond this small area, which includes a few inner city streets and a main traffic light, the rest was vast darkness.
“I would say it doesn’t even reach 5% who are back,” said in Spanish Vélez Luciano, a tall man with blonde highlights in brown hair who wore a blue T-shirt topped with a chain. in silver.
For Puerto Ricans, the uncertainty of when power will be fully restored is a haunting echo of the devastation that followed Hurricane Maria five years ago, when it took some areas months and up to to a year to others to regain power.
About half of the nearly 1.5million electricity customers were still without power on Sunday, a week after Fiona made landfall near Cabo Rojo, leaving the whole island in the dark.
Most customers who have been reconnected to the power grid are in the northeast, where the storm caused less damage. As of early Sunday, about 802,000 electricity customers had their power restored, or about 55% of all customers, according to the Puerto Rican government’s emergency portal.
Around 80 per cent, or 1,062,192 customers, had their water service restored by Saturday afternoon, according to the Water and Sewer Authority. About 20% of customers still have no water.
“It’s a shame that a week after this storm, which was strong and did damage but was not Hurricane Maria, we still don’t have completely water,” Vélez Luciano said. . In Cabo Rojo, approximately 20-25% of customers still do not have access to water. “It’s disrespectful,” he said.
Vélez Luciano had just spent another day in the scorching heat, handing out cases of bottled water, ice, food and other much-needed supplies in the southwestern municipality of Cabo Rojo, where he is a community leader.
Water coming out of the government system is still unreliable and drinking water remains a precious resource, he said.
In Cabo Rojo, the main concern is the area hospital, which was still running on Saturday evening thanks to a huge roaring generator.
Earlier Saturday, brigades from Luma Energy, the company in charge of electricity transmission and distribution, worked on a flooded road, replacing poles and repairing the main transmission line that supplies the hospital.
For days, long queues formed outside gas stations, with lines about half a mile long and people waiting between an hour and three hours at many places. Since the hurricane, fuel and diesel have become essential to daily life in Puerto Rico, primarily to power generators.
Government officials said there was enough fuel and diesel for 60 days and insisted the challenges were with distribution, not supply. But some businesses, such as grocery stores and pharmacies, have had to close for lack of electricity or fuel to run their generators, or for lack of water.
Cabo Rojo resident and restaurant owner Yeliska Vargas had been unable to reopen her business. The water pump that serves the area near his restaurant stopped working due to lack of electricity, causing a sewage overflow that left lingering dark, dirty water and a putrid smell.
“I haven’t been able to open my business for exactly a week, where I can’t earn money, I can’t pay my employees. They also fear working in an area without electricity. We are in a very difficult situation,” said Vargas, owner of La Bodeguita del Puerto restaurant.
“Puerto Rico is completely devastated”
When asked what she would like to see from the federal response and from President Joe Biden, she said she wanted Biden to come to Puerto Rico and see the extent of the damage.
“It’s important for him to come and not to stay in an area, but to have a representation of the reality of the island and the municipalities affected,” she said. “That would be a big relief for a lot of people.”
His sister, Ileana Vargas, 54, also said it would mean a lot to Biden to come see that “Puerto Rico is completely devastated.” Vargas was a supervisor at a nearby hospital on the day Fiona made landfall and said four babies were born in the hospital amid high winds and rain. The hospital continues to operate with a generator, she said.
A week after Fiona, some roads and streets remained flooded in Cabo Rojo. A small bridge collapsed and dozens of houses were destroyed, Velez Luciano said. Others suffered significant damage, including torn roofs. Velez Luciano also lost his home after Fiona’s winds shook the house and ripped parts apart, allowing rainwater to enter. He said he was able to save important documents and clothing, but “everything else was lost”.
count the dead
As of Saturday, at least 16 people had died from Hurricane Fiona, according to Puerto Rico’s Department of Health, which tracks hurricane-related deaths. The only death classified as “directly” linked to the hurricane is that of a 58-year-old man in the town of Comerío, who was found dead by a river.
Three other deaths have been classified as “indirectly” related to the hurricane; the rest are being investigated to see how they should be ranked. At least five deaths occurred because people lacked electricity. They have experienced fatal accidents with generators or candles used to light their dark homes.
Five years ago, nearly 3,000 people died in the months after Hurricane Maria devastated the island, a number far higher than the government’s first official death toll of 64. Hurricane Maria triggered one of the longest blackouts in history and left many Puerto Ricans without access. to potentially vital needs.
Mayors take matters into their own hands
While the damage from Fiona is obvious to most Puerto Rican residents, the local government expects to have a preliminary hurricane damage estimate within the next two weeks.
But mayors in remote, battered towns where power has taken too long to restore power are beginning to despair — and are even taking matters into their own hands.
When Bayamón Mayor Ramón Luis Rivera Cruz was about to start hiring his own experts and workers to repair damaged power lines, Luma Energy struck a deal with him, officially allowing him to do so safely. . Work to replace streetlights and install cables began on Saturday in the community of La Peña. The idea was to help Luma Energy rebuild as much as possible so they could focus solely on re-energizing the system.
In the town of Aguadilla, Mayor Julio Roldán Concepción followed his colleague’s lead and hired his own team to bring streetlights and cables back to where they belong.
“I’m fed up,” Roldán Concepción said on Facebook Live on Friday, announcing the start of their work on Saturday. “By the time Luma arrives, they’ll have no excuse not to restore power.”
In Utuado, Mayor Jorge Pérez Heredia released an open letter to Luma Energy on Thursday pleading with the company to connect the town to a nearby power plant that has already been powered, because Utuado “has one of the largest populations of elderly people. “, did he declare.
“I assure you that Utuado is ready to be energized,” Pérez Heredia, who has worked with power lines before, said in his letter.
In response, a Luma Energy spokesperson said the company plans to connect Utuado to the energized power plant on Friday. On Friday night, Pérez Heredia took to Facebook Live to announce that downtown and the hospital had been boosted.
“There is still work to be done, but electrical service is already being restored in our city,” he said in Spanish.
Daniella Silva reported from Puerto Rico and Nicole Acevedo reported from New York.
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