Utility, aid organizations respond to Puerto Rico in wake of Hurricane Fiona

Days after Hurricane Fiona stormed ashore in Puerto Rico, just shy of the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Maria’s landfall, nearly 80 percent of the island remains in the dark.

Crews from LUMA Energy, the power company responsible for power distribution throughout the island, the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA) and private generators have been working around the clock since Sunday to assess damages and reenergize the grid.

“We want our customers to know that LUMA has been and will continue to work around the clock to restore power to Puerto Rico following the island-wide outage that began early Sunday afternoon. While power restoration has now occurred for more than 100,000 customers, LUMA crews continue to work to stabilize the grid,” said Abner Gómez, public safety manager at LUMA. The outage tracking organization PowerOutage.us documented that as of Tuesday, 1,168,000 people were without power. The energy organization has restored power to at least 100,000 people, and has deployed more than 1,600 utility field crews, nearly 2,000 response crew members and an additional 339 contractors, according to a statement from the American Public Power Association, which is coordinating assistance efforts.

“We stand ready to mobilize emergency power restoration crews and materials through the national public power mutual aid network, as requested by affected entities,” the statement reads. “Utilities will begin damage assessment and restoration as soon as conditions permit, keeping in mind safety first.”

To aid local crews, FEMA deployed one national and four regional incident management teams and two urban search and rescue teams to augment hundreds of other personnel already on the ground. The assistance was authorized Sunday by President Joe Biden.

“Our partnership with the Government of Puerto Rico has never been stronger and we remain committed to helping them respond to and recover from Hurricane Fiona,” said FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell, who is traveling to Puerto Rico to survey damages. “We’re sending hundreds of additional staff in the next few days to place staff in each of the impacted communities to supplement our already vast footprint.”

Under the presidential natural disaster declaration, FEMA is authorized to assist in a variety of capacities including flood fighting, emergency operations, medical care and transportation, and search and rescue, among many other things. Seventy-five percent of related costs will be covered by the federal government.

“This emergency declaration allows FEMA to assign missions to other federal agencies to support and fulfill emergency needs during incident operations following a declaration,” said Robert Little, III, who has been designated as the coordinating officer for FEMA’s federal response and recovery operations in Puerto Rico. A statement from FEMA notes that additional designations might be made at a later date.

The hurricane struck shortly before the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Maria, a  deadly Category 5 hurricane that devastated Puerto Rico and other Caribbean islands in September 2017. More than 3,000 people died from that storm, and it was the third costliest cyclone on record—the costliest in Puerto Rico’s history.