COAMO, Puerto Rico — Cities in central and southern Puerto Rico are struggling to emerge from the prolonged power outage, prompting authorities in the U.S. territory to activate an emergency response team on Monday and request food distribution to those in need.
The outage happened over a week ago, leaving tens of thousands of customers without power after a transformer that was twice over its lifespan collapsed.
Officials with Luma energy, which handles transmission and distribution for Puerto Rico's energy authority, has said repairs could take more than a month. The announcement sparked widespread anger, especially as the outage has disrupted water supplies and is accompanied by daily warnings of excessive heat as the Atlantic hurricane season has just begun.
Some politicians are demanding that Governor Pedro Pierluisi declare a state of emergency.
“The residents of Santa Isabel, Coamo and Aibonito cannot survive another day without electricity,” Senator Héctor Santiago Torres of Puerto Rico said Monday, referring to cities in the central and southern regions of the Caribbean island. “This situation is untenable.”
More than 40% of Puerto Rico's 3.2 million residents live below the poverty line, and not everyone can afford generators or replace expensive electrical appliances damaged by the blackouts.
“My refrigerator broke down because of voltage problems, so I had to throw away all the spoiled food,” said Carmen Franco, 68, as she spoke over the roar of generators in the southern city of Coamo, where she waited with dozens of people for a free meal . lunch on Saturday.
Officials had transformed a music school into a huge kitchen as people cooked rice and chicken and delivered hundreds of lunches to hard-to-reach areas in the city, where nearly a fifth of the population is over 65.
“It is clear that we are not prepared for this,” Coamo Mayor Juan Carlos García Padilla said of the ongoing disruptions. He told The Associated Press that residents are already struggling with high costs of living. “They have nothing left to save.”
One resident, Carlos Ávila, 51, said he had difficulty reaching his cardiologist this weekend to have a prescription sent to the pharmacy because the phone lines were down due to the power outage: “I've been waiting for more than a week on my order. refilled my blood pressure prescription.”
Since then, Puerto Rico has been plagued by chronic power outages Hurricane Maria struck in September 2017 as a Category 4 storm, devastating the island's already fragile network. But the latest outage has lasted longer than most.
Puerto Rico depends on power plants that use coal, petroleum, and natural gas to generate about 97% of the island's electricity, and efforts to switch to sustainable energy are slow.
In addition, there is a federal control board that oversees the island's finances challenged the net metering policy, which compensates solar-equipped households for their contributions to the electricity grid, arguing that this undermines the independence of energy regulators. Solar energy advocates warn this could be a challenge hinder the adoption of rooftop solar energy and battery systems, especially for low-income communities, jeopardizing the island's progress toward its renewable energy goals.
No ruling has been made on the legal challenge.
Madelyn Vives, a 52-year-old caregiver and mother of two, said the outages are hitting Puerto Rico's elderly population the hardest. Her father, who cannot walk, lives in a house where she often comes to bring him food.
“I try to pack as many lunches as I can to feed my family, but if I only get one, it goes to my dad,” she said.
