Tag Archives: Hurricane Maria

U.S. loan to Puerto Rico a start, but more aid to come: official

Buildings damaged by Hurricane Maria are seen in Lares, Puerto Rico, October 6, 2017. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson

By Roberta Rampton

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. federal government is working on a long-term plan to help Puerto Rico rebuild after Hurricane Maria tore up the island territory’s power grid and other infrastructure three weeks ago, an administration official said on Wednesday.

The U.S. House of Representatives is set to vote on Thursday on a disaster relief bill that includes a $4.9 billion loan for Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands as part of a $36.5 billion package to help Americans recover from hurricanes and wildfires.

But the loan is intended to be a short-term measure to help the cash-strapped island territory pay urgent bills, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“The Community Disaster Loan cannot and does not address the recovery, rebuilding and future of Puerto Rico, which the administration intends to address with a more long-term solution in concert with the Puerto Rican government, oversight board, court and Congress,” the official said.

The broader package set for the House vote includes $576.6 million for wildfire efforts, $16 billion for the National Flood Insurance program and a provision enabling low-income Puerto Ricans to receive emergency nutrition assistance.

House Speaker Paul Ryan is set to travel to Puerto Rico on Friday with a bipartisan group of lawmakers to see the hurricane damage, a spokesman said.

The White House last week asked government agencies to begin estimating how much money is needed to help hurricane-hit states and territories recover and rebuild.

Puerto Rico, home to 3.4 million American citizens, is in a particular bind, already grappling with nearly $72 billion in debt before Hurricane Maria – the worst storm in almost a century – hit its shores. Estimates of the cost to its economy range as high as $95 billion.

Puerto Rico’s Governor Ricardo Rossello has asked for $4.6 billion as a “down payment on hurricane recovery efforts,” including $3.2 billion in block grants.

The oversight board charged with resolving Puerto Rico’s debt crisis told the U.S. Treasury Department that the island’s government would run out of money at the end of the month without help.

The loan is earmarked for payroll and pensions, but cannot be used for debt service.

(Additional reporting by Richard Cowan and Makini Brice; editing by Jeffrey Benkoe, Bill Trott and G Crosse)

U.S. House panel approves $36.5 billion for hurricane, wildfire relief

The U.S. Capitol Building is lit at sunset in Washington, U.S., December 20, 2016. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. House of Representatives’ Appropriations Committee has approved $36.5 billion in emergency funding for relief and recovery from the recent devastating hurricanes and wildfires, a spokeswoman for the committee’s chairman said late on Tuesday.

The bill includes $7 billion more funding than the White House had sought last week, and included nearly $6 billion more for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) than the administration’s request.

The committee’s bill also includes $576.6 million for wildfire efforts, $16 billion for the National Flood Insurance program, and a provision enabling low-income Puerto Ricans to receive emergency nutrition assistance, said Jennifer Hing, spokeswoman for Representative Rodney Frelinghuysen, the committee chairman.

It was not immediately clear when the bill would move to the floor to be voted on by the entire House.

The United States has been battered by a series of hurricanes in the Caribbean, Texas and Florida and wildfires in California.

President Donald Trump has also asked Congress to approve a $4.9 billion government loan to help Puerto Rico pay some of its bills in the wake of Hurricanes Irma and Maria.

(Reporting by Richard Cowan; Writing by Makini Brice; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe)

In the mountains of Puerto Rico, hurricane recovery is slower

In the mountains of Puerto Rico, hurricane recovery is slower

By Hugh Bronstein

TRUJILLO ALTO, Puerto Rico (Reuters) – In the lowlands of Trujillo Alto, a sprawling suburb of San Juan, clean water once again flows in the homes of most residents. But in the mountainous part of the city, which is largely poor and semi-rural, finding clean water remains a daily struggle.

Across Puerto Rico, officials say, altitude matters. While workers are making steady progress restoring power and running water to coastal regions, where the territory’s largest cities are located, the mountainous regions at the island’s center are proving challenging.

“Are people in the mountains in a worse situation than urban people? Of course,” said Puerto Rico’s minister of public policy, Ramon Rosario, “because they are more distant from the power generators on the coasts.” Without electricity, he noted, the pumps that carry water up into the mountains can’t operate or must rely on generators.

A mix of Puerto Ricans live in the “Cordillera Central,” or central range of Puerto Rico, which is far more sparsely populated than coastal regions. Many residents are poor, living in rural, agrarian-based communities. But the region also has wealthy residents seeking the cooler temperatures and beauty of the cordillera.

In Trujillo Alto, a community of 85,000 that sits partly on flat land but also extends into the mountains, hurricane recovery varies sharply by altitude.

Lydia Perez Molina, 72, still relies on government-provided food and water in her mountain-top home, where she weathered hours of howling winds and hammer-blow rains during the Sept. 20 storm.

“Water came in through the window and the wind was like a monster,” Perez Molina said.

Now, she said, tears welling up in her eyes, her son spends his time “searching and struggling to bring us what we need. He’s standing in line for water at one place and for food at another.”

Debris is seen outside a home damaged by Hurricane Maria is seen in the Trujillo Alto municipality outside San Juan, Puerto Rico, October 9, 2017. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton

Debris is seen outside a home damaged by Hurricane Maria is seen in the Trujillo Alto municipality outside San Juan, Puerto Rico, October 9, 2017. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton

On Monday, Lourdes Zayas, president of the Trujillo Alto town council, gathered with dozens of other volunteers in the municipality’s basketball gym to put together care packages of rice, beans, milk and other basic foods that are trucked out several times a day to hard-hit parts of town.

“We can keep supplying food and drinking water as long as we need to,” Zayas said. “As for the electricity, who knows.”

Trujillo Alto Mayor Jose Luis Cruz said 70 percent of the richer, low-lying parts of town now have steady supplies of water, but there is no electricity to pump water up to the poorer parts of the municipality.

Moving heavy trucks and machinery into mountain areas to clear hazards and restore electrical lines is proving difficult, too, said a civilian employee of the Army Corps of Engineers, who was deployed to Puerto Rico to work on restoring the electrical grid.

He said he was sent to Florida after Hurricane Irma to work on restoring power, but that the two situations were starkly different.

“Irma was a repair job,” he said, asking that his name not be used as he was not authorized to speak to the press. “This is a rebuild.”

(Reporting by Hugh Bronstein; Editing by Sue Horton)

Puerto Rico governor: ‘hell to pay’ over water, food deliveries

The contents of a damaged home can be seen near the town of Comerio.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Puerto Rico Governor Ricardo Rossello said on Monday he ordered an investigation of water distribution on the hurricane-battered island and warned that there would be “hell to pay” for mishandling of the supplies.

In an interview with CNN, Rossello said drinking water supplies have been restored to roughly 60 percent of the island but some areas in the north remained at only 20 percent nearly three weeks after Hurricane Maria hit the U.S. territory.

“We’re delivering food to all of the municipalities, and water,” he said. “There were complaints that that water in some places was not getting to the people so I ordered a full investigation.”

The distribution of supplies including food, water and fuel has been a major challenge for the struggling government after Maria wiped out its power grid, flooded roads and crippled the communications system.

Luis Menendez, a mail man for the U.S. Postal Service, delivers mail at an area affected by Hurricane Maria in the island of Vieques, Puerto Rico, October 7, 2017

Luis Menendez, a mail man for the U.S. Postal Service, delivers mail at an area affected by Hurricane Maria in the island of Vieques, Puerto Rico, October 7, 2017. Picture Taken October 7, 2017. REUTERS/Carlos Barria

“If there is a place, a locality that is not delivering food to the people of Puerto Rico that need it, there’s going to be some hell to pay,” Rossello said.

He said the government was trying to identify problems in the distribution pipeline, looking to ensure that local leaders deliver resources to the Puerto Rican people as soon as they arrives in the municipality.

“I think that there are places where water is being withheld and food is being withheld,” Rossello said. “We need to showcase it, we need to push it forward to the people.”

Three weeks after the storm hit, Puerto Rico still has a long road to recovery, having only 15 percent of electrical power restored and struggling to regain communication services. The White House has asked Congress for $29 billion in hurricane relief for Puerto Rico, Texas and Florida.

 

(Reporting by Doina Chiacu; Editing by Bill Trott)

 

Top Puerto Rico bank says four months too long to wait for power

An America flag is seen after Hurricane Maria hit San Lorenzo, Morovis, Puerto Rico, October 4, 2017. REUTERS/Alvin Baez

By Hugh Bronstein

SAN JUAN (Reuters) – Puerto Rico needs to accelerate the timetable for restoring its power grid or else residents will flee for the mainland rather than live without electricity for months, the chairman of the territory’s largest bank said on Friday.

In an interview with Reuters on Friday, Banco Popular Chairman Richard Carrion said prolonged outages could shrink the U.S. territory’s economy and hurt its banking system. More than two weeks after Hurricane Maria hit the island, most of Puerto Rico is still without electricity.

With about $40 billion in assets, Banco Popular is Puerto Rico’s biggest financial institution. Carrion said 85 of the bank’s 169 branches were open, and that only about 40 percent of its cash machines were operating.

Puerto Rican authorities have estimated that it will take at least four months to restore the electrical grid, something Carrion says is “not acceptable.”

“The economy will suffer, and it may push people who are on the fence to say, ‘we’re leaving’,” he said, potentially pushing the bankrupt territory into even worse financial straits.

About 85 percent of the electricity that was used on the island before Maria is no longer being delivered to customers, according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Wide areas are marred by telephone poles snapped in two by the storm, leaving transmission lines in tangled roadside heaps.

Carrion said 90 percent of the island’s point of sale terminals, where people buy things with a swipe of their bank card, were still not running. The situation has increased the need for cash, a demand that the U.S. Federal Reserve has met by flying in money.

He said he also worries about the effect Maria will have on Puerto Rico’s ability to deliver a debt restructuring that would be acceptable to holders of the territory’s defaulted bonds.

Asked when a debt deal might be clinched, Carrion said: “If you would have asked that before Maria, we would have said it could be done before the end of the year.”

Now, he said, it’s anybody’s bet.

(Reporting by Hugh Bronstein; Editing by Sue Horton and David Gregorio)

In Puerto Rico, lives depend on volunteer doctors and diesel generators

In Puerto Rico, lives depend on volunteer doctors and diesel generators

By Robin Respaut and Nick Brown

OROCOVIS, Puerto Rico (Reuters) – At a community center in Orocovis, an isolated agricultural town of 23,000 in the mountains of central Puerto Rico, six oxygen-dependent patients drew breath with the help of the diesel generator powering their equipment.

Then the generator sputtered as if it might die.

A dozen volunteer doctors and medical students from San Juan started assessing which patient should be transported first – in the town’s only ambulance – to a hospital an hour away, and which could survive without oxygen for a short time.

Javier Sevilla Rodriguez, a medical student, had only one way to make the agonizing decisions. He removed one woman’s oxygen tube, watching carefully to see how her blood-oxygen level responded.

“This is how we are doing triage right now,” he said.

Two weeks after hurricane Maria, many of Puerto Rico’s sick, frail and elderly are teetering on the edge, one faulty generator away from missing dialysis treatments or having critical medications go bad.

With nearly the entire island still lacking electricity, hospitals, clinics, and shelters are operating on aging generators not intended for long-term use and powered by scarce diesel fuel. Water is still not available for nearly half the population and supplies of medicines and oxygen are running low.

And residents still can’t call for help across vast swaths of the island because of widespread cellular network outages.

Many regions in the interior of the island, like this one, are only now seeing relief efforts, amid a plodding U.S. disaster response to this island of 3.4 million American citizens. The U.S. territory’s battered economy and infrastructure has magnified the humanitarian crisis wrought by the strongest hurricane to hit here in nine decades.

In Orocovis, even the sickest patients have gone largely without medical care since the storm. So the doctors worked quickly throughout the day, conferring with caregivers and writing prescriptions they would take back to San Juan to fill and then dispatch by messenger.

Now at the community center, their last stop before leaving town, time ran out.

With a loud clunk, the sounds of humming oxygen machines stopped and were replaced by a chorus of beeps and chirps warning that power had been cut.

The generator had failed.

A CALL FOR DOCTORS

The medical convoy that visited Orocovis is an entirely volunteer operation, organized by physician Carlos Mellado. After Maria hit Puerto Rico on September 20, blocking roads and crippling power and communications networks, Mellado asked other doctors at his clinic to cover for him and threw himself into hurricane relief work.

On the first day, he headed to Canovanas, east of the capital, checking on people at shelters. He promised to fill many patients’ prescriptions and send back the medications.

The next day, he went to Vieques, an island off Puerto Rico’s eastern coast, and found diabetics without insulin, heart patients under extreme stress and crucial treatments interrupted by power outages.

When Mellado returned to San Juan, he stopped by the local radio station, which in the days after the storm, had become a trusted source of information for Puerto Ricans living without communications. Invited to speak to listeners, he called for other physicians willing to join him.

Now, Mellado has a core group of 18 physicians, who rotate between the trips and their own practices, and a growing list of more doctors who want to join. Each morning, he takes out a paper map of the island covered with notes about where he’s been. The doctors pick a town and go.

The convoys have no official ties, but Mellado reports each evening on what the doctors found to Puerto Rican and federal officials in San Juan. Sometimes Puerto Rico’s housing department coordinates deliveries of the drugs back to the towns, and a pharmacy chain donates medications for patients without insurance.

The government’s death count from the storm more than doubled this week to 36. But doctors across the island believe the total would be far higher if it included people with chronic conditions who died because they lacked access to medical care.

“For these critically ill patients, if everything fails, they don’t have too much time,” said Humberto Guzman, a pediatric orthopedic surgeon and member of the medical convoy. “People are dying.”

‘WE CANNOT WAIT’

In Orocovis, after the generator failed, the doctors looked for a quick fix. Guzman ran up the street to the town’s shuttered urgent care facility.

There, he found a half-dozen oxygen tanks that locals said had been delivered the day before. Each could provide about a day’s worth of oxygen to a patient.

The tanks were quickly moved to the community center, where the doctors taught family members to use them. But before that became necessary, the generator sprang back to life.

The doctors packed up to leave, assuring patients’ families that they could switch to the tanks if the generator failed again.

“In every town right now, there are moments like this happening,” Guzman said. “That’s why you need people like us to just go. We cannot wait.”

(This version of the story corrects to fix pronoun in paragraph 4 and change “country” to “island” in paragraph 7)

(Reporting by Robin Respaut and Nick Brown; Editing by Sue Horton and Brian Thevenot)

Old San Juan shows its resilience after Puerto Rico hurricane

Jesus Santos sings operatic love songs while repairing plaster to a Hurricane Maria damaged facade at Cathedral of San Juan Bautista in San Juan, Puerto Rico on October 4, 2017. Picture taken on October 4, 2017. REUTERS/Hugh Bronstein

By Hugh Bronstein and Gabriel Stargardter

SAN JUAN (Reuters) – High atop the Cathedral of San Juan Bautista, Jesus Santos applied plaster to the building’s damaged facade, all the while belting out operatic love songs that echoed through Old San Juan’s eerily empty streets.

The city’s colonial heart is usually noisy and bustling with life but on Wednesday Santos’ booming voice was the dominant sound. Since Hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico, cutting off power and communications to much of the island, tourism has come to a near halt, and Old San Juan’s restaurants, bars and clubs have been hit hard.

The old city’s historic luxury hotel, El Convento, remains full, its staff said, thanks to dozens of U.S. federal employees sent in after the storm. But it is unclear how long they will stay and who will replace them once they leave.

Yadiel Martinez, 24, a supervisor at the hotel, said local tourism was just starting to recover from a difficult 2016 when the Zika virus outbreak led to thousands of cancellations.

Now, with Maria striking just before the high season begins in October, the tourism industry is taking another hit. Like many other hotels in the city, El Convento still does not have consistent water and electricity, Martinez said, and bookings are being canceled.

Compounding a bad situation, the bankrupt island is still struggling to get past a decade-long recession and a $72 billion debt crisis. It needs all the tourist revenue it can get.

“This is going to hit us very hard,” Martinez said, noting that El Convento would likely be affected for months but was not in as dire straits as many tourist-dependent businesses.

“Lots of hotels are going to close,” he predicted.

In Nono’s, a popular bar in Old San Juan, some Puerto Ricans were doing their bit to reactivate the local economy.

‘FORCED VACATION’

Nursing a Bud Light with a Fireball-and-horchata chaser, 37-year-old Brenda Ansa said she was on “forced vacation” from work in the wake of the hurricane.

With her dentist husband attending to an emergency, she said, she decided to come see how the old town had fared over a pre-lunch drink. She was surprised at the absence of people.

“This is like a ghost town,” she said.

Still, in some ways, Old San Juan is one of the city’s bright spots.

While the area sustained damage to roofs, windows and vegetation, most of the sturdy buildings in the historic neighborhood, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, came through the storm without major damage.

The old town’s fortified walls were built by the Spanish after the city was founded in 1508 by Ponce de Leon, and the cathedral where Santos, the singing plasterer, was working has survived 496 hurricane seasons.

Santos, 47, said his fellow workers in the old city appreciate his songs in the aftermath of the storm, especially one of the Cathedral’s priests.

“When I stop, he comes out and complains,” Santos said with a grin, before launching into another full-throated ballad.

Carlos Hernandez, 62, a refuse collector, was optimistic about the long-term future of the old city, even as he swept up debris from the storm.

“Tourism has gone to zero. Those who are here are residents and it’s up to us to do the cleanup,” he said with a wide, toothless smile.

But “I am a Boricua,” he said, employing a phrase islanders use to describe themselves. “And to keep a Boricua down, you have to hit him hard – and I mean hard!”

(Reporting by Hugh Bronstein and Gabriel Stargardter; Editing by Sue Horton and Bill Trott)

Trump administration asks Congress for $29 billion in hurricane relief

Trump administration asks Congress for $29 billion in hurricane relief

By David Shepardson and Richard Cowan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Trump administration on Wednesday asked U.S. lawmakers to approve $29 billion in disaster relief funds to assist victims of recent hurricanes that hit Texas, Florida and Puerto Rico.

The aid request includes $12.8 billion in new funds to help storm victims and $16 billion to defray debt in the federal government’s flood insurance program. The White House said the program would reach the limit of its borrowing authority late this month. The administration also wants another $576.5 million to pay for fighting wildfires in the western United States.

Separately, the White House budget director, Mick Mulvaney, asked federal agencies in a memorandum Wednesday to estimate by Oct. 25 how much additional funding they will need for “long-term disaster recovery.” He said agencies should only identify costs related directly to recent storms to “support recovery and rebuilding from these recent hurricanes.”

The White House said the disaster funding will ensure it has enough funds to provide support through Dec. 31 and earlier this week had about $10 billion on hand. The White House told Congress it is committing $200 million a day for recovery efforts.

The White House said it forecasts the National Flood Insurance Program, which insures about 5 million homes and businesses, will have hurricane losses of about $16 billion and proposed cancelling $16 billion in debt for the program. The administration proposed a series of reforms to the program, including phasing out issuing policies for newly constructed homes and for commercial customers after 2021.

The administration also wants to establish means testing to ensure the insurance remains affordable for low-income policyholders and to discontinue coverage for homes that are hit by repeated storms.

Congressional leaders expressed support for the plan, but flood insurance program reforms will face some opposition.

Congress approved a $15.25 billion aid package last month. House Speaker Paul Ryan said “more is clearly needed, and this funding request will help meet that need.”

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell also praised the request.

Representative Nita Lowey, a New York Democrat, praised the new request but added “far more will be necessary.”

She said Congress should add additional funding “for flexible Community Development Block Grants; rebuilding coastlines, roads, transit systems, airports, ports, and other infrastructure; small business loans; and repairs to military installations and other federal facilities damaged in the storms.”

(Reporting by Richard Cowan and David Shepardson; editing by Diane Craft and Jonathan Oatis)

U.S. House committee examining barriers to Puerto Rico recovery: official

FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump walks past hurricane wreckage as he participates in a walking tour with (L-R) first lady Melania Trump, Guaynabo Mayor Angel Perez Otero, FEMA Administrator Brock Long and Lt. General Jeffrey Buchanan in areas damaged by Hurricane Maria in Guaynabo, Puerto Rico, U.S. on October 3, 2017. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst/File Photo

By Stephanie Kelly

(Reuters) – The U.S. House Committee on Natural Resources said it will work to identify red tape and other bureaucratic hurdles to speed up Puerto Rico’s recovery and rebuilding, as the island struggles to recover from the impact of Hurricane Maria.

Committee Chairman Rob Bishop said in a press call on Wednesday that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and other federal partners will also likely be engaged for years in helping Puerto Rico get back on its feet.

Bishop added that an emergency response will be executed through FEMA and local officials.

“An emergency funding package is taking place as we speak to support those efforts,” he said.

On Tuesday a White House official told Reuters the White House was preparing a $29 billion disaster aid request to be sent to Congress after hurricanes hit Puerto Rico, Texas and Florida.

The request was expected to come on Wednesday. It will combine nearly $13 billion in new relief for hurricane victims with $16 billion for the government-backed flood insurance program.

Bishop said under evaluation was also the question of whether to modify or give additional power to the oversight board tasked with overseeing Puerto Rico’s debt restructuring.

Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands were battered by hurricanes Irma and Maria. Hurricane Maria knocked out power to Puerto Rico’s 3.4 million residents last month, devastating the island’s already dilapidated electric power infrastructure.

Following a closed-door meeting of the committee, Puerto Rico’s Republican delegate, Jenniffer Gonzalez, told reporters there are ongoing discussions among members of Congress, White House aides and the Treasury Department over a possible short-term loan to Puerto Rico, which she said will face a liquidity crisis in November.

She said it was unclear whether Trump might be able to issue an executive order, if he so desired, to provide quick financial help or whether Congress would have to act.

Representative Raul Grijalva, the senior Democrat on the panel, said of PROMESA after the meeting: “I said let’s open it up and see what is working and see what is not applicable in this situation, what we need to suspend.”

PROMESA is the federal 2016 rescue law under which Puerto Rico in May filed for the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history.

(Reporting by Stephanie Kelly and Megan Davies in New York, and Richard Cowan in Washington; writing by Stephanie Kelly; editing by Jonathan Oatis and Daniel Bases)

Special Report: The bankrupt utility behind Puerto Rico’s power crisis

Special Report: The bankrupt utility behind Puerto Rico’s power crisis

By Nick Brown, Robin Respaut and Jessica Resnick-Ault

SALINAS, Puerto Rico/NEW YORK (Reuters) – In the rural village of Salinas in southern Puerto Rico, frayed electric lines hanging from a utility pole blew in the breeze last week near the town square.

But the damage didn’t come from Hurricane Maria.

“Those wires were actually there before,” said Fermin Seda, 68, a Salinas resident who said he has grown accustomed to downed lines and power outages.

Two weeks after the storm plunged the island into a blackout, less than 10 percent of Puerto Rico’s 3.4 million people have seen power restored – and many will wait months.

Restoring the grid after the worst storm to hit here in nine decades would be a monumental task even for a well-run utility. It will be much harder for the chronically underfunded Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA), which went bankrupt in July amid mounting maintenance problems, years-long battles with creditors, a shrinking workforce and frequent management turnover.

For graphic on slow restoration of power after Maria click: http://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/rngs/STORM-MARIA-POWER/010050ZK27Z/index.html

For graphic on PREPA’s aging power plants, dwindling workforce click: http://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/rngs/USA-PUERTORICO-UTILITY/0100512E2EX/index.html

Interviews with more than two dozen officials and consultants who work for or with the U.S. territory’s government, PREPA or its creditors reveal a utility that was unprepared for a major storm despite the ever-present risk to this Caribbean island. When Maria hit, PREPA was trying to simultaneously finance an operational overhaul and dig out from about $8 billion in debt.

Puerto Rico Governor Ricardo Rossello, in an interview with Reuters on Saturday, said none of the utility’s storm response plans could account for years of poor maintenance of the dilapidated electric network.

“The emergency plan was as follows: There is no way to fix the nature of the grid,” Rossello said.

He added that the network was so feeble it would have collapsed even in a much weaker storm than the one that hit Puerto Rico at Category 4 wind strength – the second highest level in the five-tier U.S. storm gauge.

“If you have an old grid susceptible to collapse, there is no way – until you change it completely – that it can sustain the winds of a Category 4, or even really a Category 2,” the governor said.

CHRONIC WEAKNESSES

A host of chronic problems at PREPA left the island’s electric grid vulnerable to collapse in a major storm, Reuters found. They include:

* Frequent turnover in management and board leadership,which has long failed to prioritize grid maintenance, accordingto reports prepared in 2015 and 2016 for utility regulators bythe consultancy Synapse Energy Associates. The deferred upkeep,according to a PREPA assessment in April, led to a “degraded andunsafe” grid that needed at least $4 billion for modernizationof an “isolated system, in challenging terrain” that is “subjectto natural atmospheric events.” * Falling revenues that failed to cover operating expensesbecause of poor collection of utility bills and declining energysales through a decade-long recession. * A lack of regulatory oversight prior to 2014, and a roughtransition of power from former utility board members andofficials to a new energy commission created that year bylegislation, with little handoff of disaster-preparedness plans. * A staff diminished from 8,628 workers in 2012 to 6,042this year, according to the April PREPA report. The talent drainreflects a larger exodus of residents from Puerto Rico -especially skilled workers – as the U.S. territory lost 300,000people, or 8 percent of its populace, between 2010 and 2016,according to U.S. Census data.Ricardo Ramos, who took over as the utility’s chief executive in March, told Reuters that the number of employee departures over the past five years is actually closer to 4,000 – with the vast majority being key operational workers such as linemen, power plant operators and mechanics.

They were exactly the kind of workers the utility couldn’t afford to lose.

“PREPA did not invest in new power plants or new generation, so our power plants are very, very old; our distribution system is very, very old,” Ramos said in an interview on Monday.

One pivotal question now is whether the United States will work merely to patch the existing network or allocate billions of dollars in federal funds to overhaul it. The government is open to spending money on modernization, Homeland Security Advisor Tom Bossert said at a briefing last week.

The White House did not respond to Reuters’ inquiries seeking comment on the short- and long-term U.S. roles in restoring power to this U.S. territory.

FILE PHOTO: A woman chats with a neighbour at the Moradas Las Teresas Elderly House, where about two hundred elderly people live without electricity following damages caused by Hurricane Maria in Carolina, Puerto Rico, September 30, 2017. REUTERS/Carlos Barria/File Photo

FILE PHOTO: A woman chats with a neighbour at the Moradas Las Teresas Elderly House, where about two hundred elderly people live without electricity following damages caused by Hurricane Maria in Carolina, Puerto Rico, September 30, 2017. REUTERS/Carlos Barria/File Photo

‘THE LONG HAUL’

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) told Reuters that the agency is “in this for the long haul” but offered no details on the level of funding it could commit to the island’s power grid.

Citizens of Puerto Rico do not receive services equal to U.S. states but also do not pay federal income tax.

The collapse of the grid isn’t the only cause of the island’s suffering. The U.S. relief effort so far has been unable to supply Puerto Rico with all the fuel it requires, for instance, leaving motorists waiting in long gasoline-station lines and depriving many backup electricity generators of diesel.

The lengthy electrical outages are a bitter pill for storm victims, who before Maria had already endured frequent service interruptions and rates higher than any U.S. state except Hawaii, according to PREPA and the U.S. Energy Department.

The impacts go well beyond temporary discomfort. The lack of power has been a key factor in a humanitarian crisis as residents with no refrigeration for food and medicine scrambled to find open stores and waited in endless lines.

In Salinas, 54-year-old Maria Sanchez wept as she threw out all of the food inside her mother’s fridge. By Saturday, she and six family members were surviving on crackers after eating all the other non-perishable food in the house.

“We are not rich – to throw away food like that. We’re running out of food – like fast,” she said, sitting on the porch, where a mild sea breeze offered little reprieve from the oppressive heat.

Diabetic Nancy Rivera lost more than food.

“All of my insulin is ruined,” said Rivera, 59, of Santurce, a district in San Juan, who stopped taking her spoiled medicine four days after the storm.

‘TRIAGE’ OF GRID REPAIRS

Winds of up to 155 mph (250 km/hr) during Maria knocked out about 80 percent of PREPA’s distribution network, said Ramos, the utility’s chief executive. Since the storm, power has been limited to key locales such as hospitals and hotels using generators fueled with a scarce supply of diesel.

Damage assessment for the grid, usually completed within 48 hours of a hurricane in the mainland United States, took a week-and-a-half, Ramos said. The assessment went as fast as possible given the widespread damage, he said, and the utility had three working helicopters to survey the network.

FEMA last week put the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers – often tasked with infrastructure projects – in charge of short-term power restoration, in coordination with the Energy Department, the American Public Power Association and the New York Power Authority.

Gil Quiniones, CEO of NYPA, said the Army Corps had asked his utility for experts in power systems – which isn’t a Corps specialty – who can “think strategically on how to triage the situation and how to prioritize the work.”

The task is made more daunting by the island’s ill-maintained infrastructure. And PREPA’s strapped finances mean it cannot keep large standing orders for full-scale repair operations to swarm in after disasters, as utility repairman did last month in Florida after Hurricane Irma.

Ramos said PREPA has about 30 days worth of existing supplies for repairs following a storm; more is being ordered, to arrive in the next few weeks, he said.

‘THEY CAN’T TELL ME HOW LONG’

On the south side of Puerto Rico, near most of the island’s power plants, broken wires and blackouts were common before Maria.

“They tell me that right now, they’re evaluating damage to the power grid in our region,” Salinas Mayor Karilyn Bonilla said on Friday. “And they can’t tell me how long that will take.”

Bonilla said she has seen workers remove a few transformers since Maria hit but no one fixing downed power lines.

The amount of time power plants were down due to unplanned outages, measured in megawatt hours, more than doubled between mid-2015 and mid-2016, according to Synapse, the consultant firm.

By summer 2016, residents were experiencing four to five times the number of outages as the average U.S. customer, the consultants wrote.

The system’s deficiencies were laid bare in September 2016, when a transformer fire knocked out half of the island’s power, which wasn’t fully restored for nearly a week, forcing the governor to declare a state of emergency.

“Basically it was what you can call an unfortunate set of events, but really it is what I have said since I began at PREPA: lack of maintenance,” Ramos said.

One of the biggest factors in the outages: a constantly shrinking staff, driven away by costly medical benefits and unsafe conditions. The utility’s April report notes PREPA had a greater-than-average number of safety incidents for U.S. utilities, with more than 14,000 accidents and 15 fatalities in a 10-year period.

Many workers left for better opportunities, Ramos said. Because Puerto Ricans are American citizens, they face no legal barriers in leaving the island for the mainland.

“The truth of the matter is they make a lot more money in the U.S.,” said Ramos.

FIGHT FOR CONTROL

U.S. utilities are regulated by the states in which they operate, and by the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission if they operate across state lines. U.S. federal oversight of PREPA is limited to environmental and safety standards and does not cover the transmission network.

Unlike utilities in U.S. states, PREPA had no regulator for decades and essentially governed itself. In 2014, the Puerto Rico Energy Commission was created by the island’s legislature, which sought greater oversight in response to perceived neglect by PREPA’s leadership at the time, which resisted the intervention.

Weeks after the act passed, PREPA became insolvent.

Today, the political squabbling over control of PREPA – and blame for its problems – continues even as utility officials respond to a historic crisis.

Ramon Luis Nieves – former head of Puerto Rico’s senate energy committee and a champion of the 2014 legislation – blasted former utility officials for poor oversight in an interview last week.

“Using their powers of self-regulation, PREPA itself was judge and jury,” he said as he waited in a five-hour gasoline line.

Energy Commissioner Angel Rivera said former PREPA officials gave the new regulator nothing in the way of disaster plans.

“If PREPA did any sort of analysis like this when they were creating the system, we would not know,” said Rivera, who was appointed in November 2014.

PREPA also fought the commission’s requirements to integrate renewable energy, said Nieves, the former senator. The commission rejected the utility’s first long-term plan to create a more reliable, cost-effective grid as inadequate, according to commission records.

Attempts by Reuters to reach PREPA’s previous chief executive, Javier Quintana, were unsuccessful.

Ramos – Quintana’s successor and a former engineer and PREPA employee – said he agreed with the need for an oversight commission when it was formed. But he now believes the commission wields too much power, citing its pushback on the utility’s capital spending.

“I basically have no power,” he said. “Basically, they wanted to run PREPA except during a hurricane, because now they are nowhere to be found.”

Jose Roman, interim chairman of the energy commission, disputed the notion that the commission wanted to run the utility, saying it only aimed to protect customers.

YEARS OF REBUILDING AHEAD

What remains unclear is the level of commitment from FEMA, the Army Corps and U.S. utilities for longer-term upgrades to buttress the system against future storms.

Bossert, the U.S. Homeland security advisor, said on Sept. 28 that the power grid would have to be rebuilt, “so we’re going to put federal money into this.”

The costs will be steep: The $4 billion estimate for modernization from PREPA does not include additional damage from Maria.

The task will be complicated by PREPA’s battles with creditors, who are led by hedge funds and mutual funds. The parties had been in debt restructuring talks for three years before the agency filed for bankruptcy in July.

A group of PREPA’s largest creditors, which include Franklin Advisers, Oppenheimer Funds and BlueMountain Capital, offered a loan of $1 billion after the hurricane. The island’s fiscal oversight committee rejected the offer, calling it a “publicity stunt” and criticizing the repayment and interest terms as unfavorable.

A spokesperson for the creditors declined to comment on that statement but the investment firms’ advisor, investment bank Houlihan Lokey, earlier expressed disappointment that the proposed loan had been rejected without negotiation.

The utility had considered but not yet implemented a wide variety of infrastructure improvements when senior leadership turned over after Rossello became governor at the beginning of the year. The governor typically appoints PREPA’s board and executive director.

Now new honchos are starting over in assessing PREPA’s needs, a repeat of past leadership transitions.

In the summer of 2016, PREPA held its 2017 public budgeting proceeding – the first led by the island’s utility commission rather than the utility itself.

Amid the deep financial problems of the island’s government and the utility, the commission allocated about $400 million for PREPA to address maintenance and repairs for the year, Commissioner Rivera said. Overall capital improvement plans for 20 years come to $2 billion, according to commission consultant Synapse.

Even the long-term plan represents just a fraction of what will be needed, suggesting the grid overhaul will require a serious commitment from the United States. Discussions about that reality are starting now.

“There’s diverging sentiments on the role of U.S. funding,” said a private sector energy executive who is working with PREPA to fix the networks and has been involved in strategy discussions with officials from FEMA and Puerto Rico.

“That’s where things start to get stuck,” he said. “No one argues about a generator in a hospital, but that doesn’t get the lights in the houses turned back on. Nobody knows where the money is going to come from.”

(Reporting By Nick Brown and Robin Respaut in San Juan and Salinas, Puerto Rico, and Jessica Resnick-Ault in New York; Additional reporting by Scott DiSavino and Stephanie Kelly in New York and Roberta Rampton in Washington; Writing by David Gaffen and Jessica Resnick-Ault; Editing by Brian Thevenot)