It
has been more than seven months since hurricane Irma and Maria ravished Puerto
Rico. Puerto Rico's Senate is closing in on government agencies to explain why
tens of thousands of people still lack basic necessities such as power or
appropriate shelter. Nearly seven months after Hurricane Maria an island-wide
blackout hit Puerto Rico due to an increasingly unstable power grid. Officials
originally stated that it could take 24 to 36 hours to fully restore power to
nearly 1.4 million customers which faced an obvious backlash. Main news outlets
only gave attention to the current island-wide blackout that's going on
right now but before the current power outage, several large power outages hit
Puerto Rico in recent months.
Since
then the power outages have created major traffic across the island forcing
dozens of businesses with no generators to temporarily close and interrupted
classes and work. Since then the island's international airport has switched to
a backup generator and no cancellations or delays were immediately reported.
CBS news correspondent David Begnaud has been reporting on the island's
devastation for quite some time and tweeted out the island's priority list
Begnaud reports that the
main hospital in San Juan has decided to run on a generator instead of the
power grid since the hurricane because the generator was more reliable. Power company
spokeswoman Yohari Molina told The Associated Press that crews were
investigating what caused the blackout, saying she had no other details.
Angel Figueroa,
president of a union that represents power company workers in Puerto Rico, said
it appears that a failure on the main line caused the island's entire
electrical grid to shut down to protect itself.
The standoff caught the
attention of top Puerto Rico government officials and ended several hours later
after the power company promised it would keep crews in Las Piedras until
service is fully restored. Justo Gonzalez, the company' executive sub-director,
said in a statement that he is committed to restoring power to everyone but
that blocking crews would only delay those efforts.
"People are not
doing well," Las Piedras Mayor Miguel Lopez told The Associated Press,
noting that there are many elderly people in his town. "They are
suffering."
The mayors of rural
towns across Puerto Rico recently complained that they remain largely
forgotten, prompting the island's Senate president on Monday to order agencies
such as the power company as well as Puerto Rico's department of transportation
and housing authority to submit a restoration plan and a timetable to meet the
mayors' needs.
The U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers, which is overseeing federal power restoration efforts on the island,
has said they expect to restore power to everyone by late May. Some 40,000
power customers still remain without normal electrical service as a result of
the hurricane.
The new blackout
occurred as Puerto Rico legislators debate a bill that would privatize the
island's power company, which is $14 billion in debt and relies on
infrastructure nearly three times older than the industry average.Many remain
wary of that timetable, including federal legislators who have requested that
the agency's mission is extended as they note that the Atlantic hurricane
seasons starts June 1.
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