Power Is Mostly Back in Puerto Rico, but the Frustration Remains

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/19/us/puerto-rico-power-electricity.html

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SAN JUAN, P.R. — Glenis Ortiz was working when the power went out on Wednesday morning. Soon after, two of her three children, ages 14 and 15, called to say they were being sent home early from school.

Ms. Ortiz, 36, went on working, but two questions were inevitable for her and residents like her: How long would the power be out, and how much would it disrupt her life?

Such is life in Puerto Rico, months after Hurricane Maria swept over the island in September and ravaged its infrastructure, highlighting the fragile nature of the power grid. In the months since, the island’s utility had restored power to 97 percent of its customers.

But a freak accident on Wednesday plunged the island back into darkness.

“It’s frustrating,” she said, while her youngest child shouted to her from their second-floor home. “Very frustrating. But it doesn’t really scare us as much anymore. We know how to live without power. Before, we panicked.”

By midday Thursday, the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority said it had restored power to previous levels. Though the commonwealth has seen other power outages since the storm, Wednesday’s blackout was the first time that nearly all everyone found themselves in the dark. A failure last week cut power to 870,000 of the island’s nearly 1.5 million customers.

A walk on Thursday around the San Juan neighborhoods of Las Palmas and Barrio Obrero, working-class communities with many immigrants from the Dominican Republic, found some signs of progress in rebuilding. But some homes’ roofs were still in tatters; a few businesses were still boarded up.

Uncertainty remains. The lines at the gas stations on Wednesday reminded Ms. Ortiz, who moved to Puerto Rico from the Dominican Republic 23 years ago, of the ones shortly after Hurricane Maria. Not knowing how long the power would be out, people rushed to buy fuel for their generators.

“You just have to keep adjusting,” said a woman sitting outside her house nearby. “What can we do?” (Residents said the power returned Wednesday afternoon.)

The United States Army Corps of Engineers, which is overseeing the restoration effort, has said that it hoped to have power fully restored by mid-May, just weeks before the hurricane season starts on June 1. Some, however, are skeptical, and lawmakers have called for a hearing on the restoration efforts.

Living under the specter of a delicate power grid has forced many to adapt. Residents have sunk thousands of dollars into buying and fueling generators. But the situation has also forced subtler changes to everyday routines.

Ms. Ortiz, who makes a living caring for the elderly and children, no longer stocks her refrigerator or pantry with much food beyond the emergency hurricane supply. She buys only a few days’ worth of, for example, meat at time.

“I buy just what we need,” she said. “You never know when the power is going to go out again and you’ll lose all that food.”

The power was not out long enough on Wednesday to force her to throw out any food, but she said that the day brought back painful memories.

After Hurricane Maria, she had to cook only what was needed that day because she could not refrigerate leftovers and had to wash clothes by hand. Debris and trash piled up at the end of her block for months, and her family slept with the windows open in the sweltering heat. Her children missed two months of school, and she said she cried when her children asked why this had happened to them.

“It was really hard, maybe the hardest thing in my life,” she said.

Many Puerto Ricans have left the island completely, including one of Ms. Ortiz’s clients, an older woman whose family moved her to the mainland. That meant Ortiz’s work schedule dropped to two days a week from six.

“That was my best paying job,” she said.

A few blocks away, Jorge Piris, 70, the owner of Nueva Vida Car Care, was busy catching up on work because of a backlog created, in part, by Wednesday’s blackout. Nine cars in his shop needed work, and he was late for an appointment with an accountant.

“Hey, it’s been hard to get over there today,” Mr. Piris said on the phone with the accountant. “How much longer are you in today?”

The power went out at Piris’s shop around 10:30 a.m. on Wednesday while he was under the hood of a car. He quickly unplugged expensive equipment in his shop, such as a computer and air compressor, to prevent any damage. By the time the power was restored, his three employees were getting off work. A day was lost.

“It’s annoying,” he said. “When the power came back on, my employees had to leave for the day. It was too late.”

Then he pointed to the cars jammed into the two-garage shop, which needs $14,000 worth of repairs — part of the roof and a back wall are missing.

“Look at all that we’ve got to do,” Mr. Piris said.

The generator he used during the four months he was without power after Hurricane Maria was simply too expensive to use. Asked how much business he lost in that span, Piris estimated over 50 percent. “Easily,” he said.

“It’s frustrating,” said Mr. Piris, who is from Cayey, an hour away from San Juan, but works in the neighborhood. “If the power outages keep happening, you get disillusioned. I know people that have left the island. I’m not going anywhere. I’ll die here.”

He then showed a spot on the wall where the power meter was affixed. He pointed to numbers scribbled by an employee: 18/12/2017. On Dec. 18, Mr. Piris said power returned to this shop.

“A date I’ll never forget,” he said. The power has gone out at least twice more since then. Such is life in Puerto Rico.