On Dec. 14, 2017, an electrical utility crew works on a line greater than three months after Hurricane Maria.
Picture vichinterlang/Getty Photographs
Bronx elected officers with ties to Puerto Rico are sounding the alarm over the territory’s failing power infrastructure amid a current two-day island-wide blackout.
Though energy was restored to almost all 1.5 million prospects by the morning of April 18, the issue goes far past a single incident. The island has a notoriously unreliable power system and has seen little enchancment since Hurricane Maria in 2017, when Congress allotted billions to improve and restore the grid and arrange solar-powered backup that may run when the grid fails.
Simply earlier than the newest blackout, and in anticipation of the summer time months, U.S. Rep. Ritchie Torres signed on to an April 15 letter to the Trump administration calling for elevated emergency era for Puerto Rico. On social media, he known as the island’s weak energy system “a humanitarian crisis.”
The island is predicted to expertise electrical energy shortfalls on 90 days between June and October, the letter mentioned.
Different elected officers harshly criticized the federal authorities for underinvesting within the U.S. territory.
Meeting Member Karines Reyes mentioned on social media that the dearth of dependable power infrastructure confirmed an “ongoing federal disregard for the island.”
“It is unacceptable that since Hurricane Maria, little to no progress has been made to improve Puerto Rico’s power system,” she mentioned in an April 17 Instagram put up.
Reyes, who chairs the New York State Puerto Rican/Hispanic Activity Drive, known as for elevated native and federal collaboration and deployment of the U.S. Military Corps of Engineers.
State Sen. Luis Sepúlveda mentioned in an April 17 put up that the frequent outages, which most lately affected hospitals and even the airport, are “not a natural accident” however relatively “a direct consequence of failed governance and decades of neglect.”
The territory’s Republican Governor Jenniffer González Colón, who beforehand served because the island’s sole consultant to the U.S. Congress, has proven “a disturbing lack of leadership, urgency and empathy,” Sepúlveda mentioned.
González Colón posted on social media that “Puerto Ricans deserve a reliable energy grid — not excuses” and thanked Lee Zeldin, who heads the Environmental Safety Company, for pledging assist following the newest huge blackout. However Sepúlveda mentioned the federal authorities beneath President Trump has “systematically ignored, underfunded and dismissed” the territory.
“What we are witnessing is not simply a power outage but a moral and administrative collapse that has left millions in the dark, literally and figuratively,” he mentioned.
In the meantime, Bronx Borough President Vanessa L. Gibson issued a press release in help of the residents of Puerto Rico fighting the outage.
“Praying for our Puerto Rican brothers and sisters as they face yet another power outage,” Gibson mentioned. “Here in the Bronx—home to one of the largest Puerto Rican communities in the diaspora—we stand in full solidarity with our neighbors on the island as they navigate this crisis.”
