Tens of thousands of homes and business still did not have electricity in Puerto Rico on Thursday, over two weeks after Hurricane Fiona caused an island-wide outage for its 3.3 million people.
The storm slammed into Puerto Rico on September 18, about five years after Hurricane Maria also knocked out all power on the Caribbean island.
PowerOutage.us said that about 82,000 customers were without service in Puerto Rico as of Thursday afternoon, a decrease from 118,000 from early in the day, based on information from LUMA Energy, which operates the island’s grid.
LUMA Energy said it restored service to 1.407 million, or about 96 percent of all customers by early Thursday and expects to return power to 90 percent of customers in the hardest hit areas by the end of the day, so long as sufficient generation is available.
However, the power company told Puerto Rican newspaper El Nuevo Día that some customers could expect blackouts because there aren’t enough megawatts to cover the demand.
People walk on a street affected by the passing of Hurricane Fiona in Peñuelas, Puerto Rico, on September 19. At least 82,000 homes and businesses did not have power as of Thursday
U.S. President Joe Biden embraces House Small Business Committee Chair Representative Nydia Velazquez (D-NY), who was born in Puerto Rico, during his visit in Port of Ponce, Puerto Rico, on Monday as he announced a $60 million aid package to help the island’s recovery from the damage caused by Hurricane Fiona
A woman looks at her water-damaged belongings after flooding caused by Hurricane Fiona tore through her home in Toa Baja, Puerto Rico
‘For tonight, there is a projection of about 2,600 megawatts of demand and, in terms of capacity, we also have 2,600 megawatts,’ said Daniel Hernández, LUMA Energy’s director of renewal projects.
‘We would spend tonight without any type of (energy) reserve or with some load relief in order to have some reserve. Demand and (capacity) would be the same or demand could exceed capacity, which implies that we would have to relieve customers.’
The Electric Power urged ‘all our customers to reduce energy consumption to minimize the percentage of customers that may be affected by the lack of capacity and current reserves in the generation system.’
That pace of restoration – though slow – has been faster than after Maria when almost all 1.5 million customers had no power for a week. At that time the now bankrupt Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA) was still operating the grid.
It took PREPA about 11 months to restore power to all customers, but Maria was a much more powerful storm than Fiona.
Maria hit Puerto Rico in 2017 as a Category 4 hurricane with winds of 155 miles per hour, while Fiona hit as a Category 1 storm with winds of 85 mph.
Antonio Perez Miranda (photographed on September 20) walks out of his house through the mud left by the river, Rio de la Plata, which overflowed in the Puerto Rican city of San Jose de Toa Baja after Hurricane Fiona made landfall on September 18
A house (pictured September 21) lies in the mud after it was washed away by Hurricane Fiona in Salinas, Puerto Rico
Residents line up for food in the Puerto Rico town of Yauca on September 26 after Hurricane Fiona knocked out power to homes and businesses
Residents have called on the Puerto Rican government to end LUMA Energy’s contract.
President Joe Biden visited the island Monday and pledged more than $60 million in aid to help with the recovery and said more money was coming.
His appearance presented a more compassionate image as he surveyed the damage left behind by Hurricane Fiona in comparison with his predecessor, Donald Trump, who publicly fought with the island’s leadership and even suggested in 2018 that death tolls from hurricanes were manipulated to make him look ‘bad.’
In a notoriously viral moment, Trump shocked local residents by jovially tossing rolls of paper towels, basketball style, into a crowd of residents whose lives had been turned upside down by flooding and damage.
Carmen Yulin, the mayor of the capital San Juan at the time, called Trump’s behavior ‘abominable.’
The hurricane also struck eastern Canada on September 24, leaving more than a third of Nova Scotia without power.
Nova Scotia Power, a unit of Canadian energy company Emera Inc, said that about 4,200 customers remained without power early Thursday.
LUMA is a joint venture owned by units of Canadian energy firm ATCO Ltd (50 percent and U.S. energy contractor Quanta Services Inc (50 percent).
