The entirety of Puerto Rico lost power on Sunday, leaving the island’s over 3 million people in the dark before the Category 1 Hurricane Fiona that was forecasted to dump at least over a foot and up to 30 inches of rain on the island.
Over 1.4 million customers tracked by Luma Energy, which owns the transmission and distribution of power in Puerto Rico, lost power. This includes places like health centers, where many people rely on electricity to survive. According to PowerOutage.us, the vast majority of buildings and residences are still without power as of Monday morning, with over 1.3 million customers currently in a blackout.
The hurricane, which experts say was likely made worse by the climate crisis, has now largely passed Puerto Rico, leaving landslides and flooding in its wake, destruction that Puerto Rico Gov. Pedro Pierluisi called “catastrophic.” The storm also ripped the roofs off of homes and took down a bridge in the town of Utuado in central Puerto Rico.
Large portions of the island have also been left without safe drinking water in the wake of the storm. Officials have confirmed at least one death caused by the storm so far.
President Joe Biden declared a state of emergency for the island on Sunday, freeing up Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) funding and resources to coordinate a response to the storm.
Luma says that high speed winds and otherwise poor conditions disrupted power lines, leading to the blackout. The company says that it could take several days for power to be fully restored.
The storm hit five years after Hurricane Maria, the worst-ever hurricane to hit the U.S. territory, also knocked out all power on the island. The island’s now-privately owned power grid never recovered from that storm — the grid is now constantly plagued by power outages and brownouts, and residents and energy analysts note that electricity can be knocked out for hundreds of thousands of customers if there’s even a mild storm.
Maria’s devastation highlighted deep-rooted issues with the island’s electrical grid. It took nearly an entire year for power to be fully restored to the island’s customers — if it can be categorized as such with constant blackouts and brownouts. The government agency that managed the electricity system at the time was dealing with a shrinking workforce, billions in debt and corruption within its ranks.
The hurricane paved the way for Luma to take over the transmission and distribution of power on the island from the agency, known as Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA), with the goal of revitalizing the grid and making it more reliable. But experts noted when officials drew up plans for the transfer in 2018 that privatization would not help heal the island’s grid — and, as previous privatization schemes for water utilities on the island showed, it could make the situation worse.
Indeed, some Puerto Ricans say that the blackouts and brownouts have remained unchanged or even worsened since Luma took over grid management last year, while customers are now paying double the rate for electricity that they were paying before the takeover. These reliability issues also come as the island’s grid is almost entirely powered by fossil fuel sources, not only contributing to the climate crisis but also majorly driving prices up, according to one analysis by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.
On top of that, thousands of unionized workers who worked for PREPA lost their jobs or were transferred to other departments when Luma took over; while many were offered jobs with Luma, they declined because they would have lost benefits like pensions, according to the union.
Because of these issues, Puerto Ricans have waged protests against Luma, asking for the government to end its contract with the company.
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
Last week, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment. We are presently looking for 300 new monthly donors in the next 4 days.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy