On Thursday, after nearly 50 days of managing life post-Hurricane Maria, Puerto Ricans were dealt yet another blow when a massive power outage took place in San Juan. While the blackout lasted for the day and power was restored in the evening, only 25 percent of the power was back up as of late Thursday night.
Power was gradually returning to San Juan, Puerto Rico, on Thursday after a massive outage struck the city.
The problem was with a failure on a main north-south transmission line, said Fernando Padilla, an official with the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, known as PREPA.
"It was a mechanical issue on the line, could have happened at any line," he said. "It's being patrolled and repaired by PREPA." [...]
PREPA spokesman Carlos Monroig said 25% of power was back and he expects 42% of power to be restored by Friday morning. He said he didn't know what caused the transmission line to fail.
It’s hard to know where to begin here because it’s absolutely maddening. Certainly, mechanical issues do happen. And for sure the utility workers from PREPA and those workers who have come from out-of-state to assist are working around the clock to get power back. But that doesn’t address the numerous incompetencies of the local and federal government after this disaster. Nor does it do anything to help Puerto Ricans who are basically living day to day in post-apocalyptical conditions—struggling to find the most basic necessities like water, food and diesel for generators. It is really an ongoing nightmare with no end in sight.
And where is Donald Trump while all this is happening? He’s in Asia, doing very important diplomatic work and strengthening our relationships with other countries. This is how he goes about that important task, by the way, just in case you missed it.
And there we have it. It’s no wonder this response has been appalling. From the top down, leadership is abysmal. We cannot let this continue to happen. This will only get worse and continue to have catastrophic consequences for a generation or more.