Puerto Rico still without power, coping best it can
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — Vast stretches of Puerto Rico’s capital remain without electricity, including power to operate traffic lights, in the two weeks since Hurricane Maria.
That’s left San Juan a tangle of traffic jams, and in some places traffic flow looks like automotive games of chicken. Hundreds of police have been deployed to direct traffic at the largest intersections.
“The only thing that kills you is the heat,” said officer Ulises Villanueva, wearing a dark-blue uniform from his cap to his boots as he worked a 12-hour shift at an intersection on F.D. Roosevelt Avenue in San Juan’s financial district.
Hurricane Maria tore across the Caribbean island Sept. 20 with winds of more than 150 mph, killing at least 34 people and devastating the island’s antiquated electricity grid.
Gov. Ricardo Rossello said Thursday that power has been restored to 9 percent of customers. The government’s hope is to have the power back on for a quarter of the island within a month and for the entire U.S. territory of 3.4 million people by March.
Traffic congestion is a part of life on the densely populated island, but the loss of electricity has introduced new levels of it, particularly in San Juan, which is a hub for the islandwide hurricane-relief effort.
Islanders have devised a range of strategies to cope.
“It’s better to walk,” said Fatima Arias, who was on her way to a bank in the city and to see relatives. “We are not very polite in the streets. Everyone wants to go first.”
Victor Serrano, who works in San Juan as an education program coordinator, has been carpooling with colleagues from his home in the suburb of Guaynabo, partly to conserve gasoline. He has adjusted his schedule to avoid the worst of the afternoon rush hour.
“I believe it’s being managed as well as you could expect,” he said of the traffic.
Elvin Feliciano, who lives in Ponce on the south coast, drove across the island to San Juan for work on Thursday and gave officers high marks for keeping the traffic rolling.
“Everybody is cooperating,” he said. “Ninety percent of the drivers are respectful.”
In the two weeks since Maria devastated Puerto Rico, critics have focused on the pace of federal aid reaching Puerto Rico. But U.S. states, which often provide significant assistance during disasters, took far longer to dispatch equipment and personnel to the island than they did to Texas or Florida after Hurricanes Harvey and Irma. Both have contributed to the suffering of Puerto Rico’s residents and delays in the island’s recovery.
Within a week of Hurricane Harvey slamming the Texas coast, for example, Virginia had dispatched a 14-person urban search-and-rescue team, a 17-person team to save people trapped by floodwaters, and a National Guard team with 40 soldiers and seven helicopters.
But after Maria hit Puerto Rico, Virginia sent just a single person through an interstate compact for managing disaster response. His job was to help the island coordinate its requests for aid from other states.
State officials say Puerto Rico was slow to ask for or accept assistance — a claim Rossello disputes, saying Maria proved more powerful than expected and that he acted appropriately. There were also worries about how the bankrupt island would reimburse the states as required under the compact.
Assistance began moving to the island after the federal government agreed — six days after the storm — to foot the bill for the recovery.
“There were some concerns” about Puerto Rico’s ability to repay the states, said Mike Sprayberry, president of the National Emergency Management Association, a group of state disaster-response coordinators. It runs the Emergency Management Assistance Compact, which coordinates most state-to-state assistance.
Under the rules that govern the compact, the state or territory that receives help is required to pay for that assistance, then seek reimbursement
from the Federal Emergency Management Agency for a portion of the costs. In general, FEMA covers just 75 percent of assistance when a disaster is declared.
But Puerto Rico is $74 billion in debt and declared bankruptcy in May. That may have been a factor in some states deciding whether to send assistance, according to Sprayberry.
When asked about the delay in aid response, states had the same response: They can’t send what Puerto Rico hasn’t asked for.
“We cannot deploy personnel, equipment or other aid without a formal request from the impacted state,” Jeff Caldwell, a spokesman for the Virginia Department of Emergency Management, said in an email. “We respect the [emergency compact] process and will not self-deploy.”
New Jersey deployed crews when the exact expertise and resources were identified and requested through the emergency compact and FEMA, said Brian Murray, a spokesman for Gov. Chris Christie.
Puerto Rico has yet to formally request help from Florida, according to Alberto Moscoso, a spokesman for Florida’s Emergency Management Division.
Rossello said it took time to appreciate the extent of the devastation.
Once that was clear, Rossello said in an interview, his office “asked for [help under the compact], and asked for [it] quickly.”
Information for this article was contributed by Michael Melia of The Associated Press; and by Christopher Flavelle, Jonathan Levin, Ari Natter, Jennifer A. Dlouhy, Elise Young, Henry Goldman, Jordyn Holman and Anne Mostue of Bloomberg News.