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Although Hurricane Ernesto was a relatively small natural disaster for the U.S. territory, it cut off power to a large portion of Puerto Rico’s population.
What happens?
Although the storm moved north and had only just strengthened into a Category 1 hurricane before hitting Puerto Rico, it brought up to 10 inches of rain, CNN reported. Wind speeds of up to 80 mph were on the low end for hurricanes, but according to the New York Times, 718,000 homes were without power on the evening of August 14.
As many as 200,000 people were still without power Monday morning as the storm moved off the U.S. coast, NPR reported.
“This shows how fragile the power grid is seven years after Hurricane Maria,” Villalba Mayor Luis Javier Hernández Ortiz told the Times. “In my town, we had a lot of rain but hardly any wind. There is no logical reason why our town doesn’t have electricity.”
Why is this important?
The storm was relatively mild, and some Puerto Ricans wondered why so many people were without power, according to NPR. Dangerous weather made the electricity problems even more problematic.
Not only do Puerto Ricans need air conditioning and fans to cope with the island’s summer heat and humidity, which includes heat indices of over 110 degrees Fahrenheit, but life-saving medical equipment cannot operate; 23 hospitals are using generators, according to the Associated Press.
The power outages also left some residents without access to drinking water. According to CNN, more than 120,000 customers were affected by interruptions in water filtration.
Due to rising global temperatures, hurricanes in the United States are becoming more destructive, largely due to increased rainfall. Sea level rise and higher ocean temperatures are contributing to the increasing intensity of these storms, and this hurricane season has long been feared for its potential activity.
In July, Hurricane Beryl hit the Texas coast and left millions of homes in the Houston area without power, some for over a week.
What is being done with the power grid in Puerto Rico?
Many residents have switched to solar power, AP reported, which can provide household energy even when the grid is out. Today, there are 117,000 rooftop solar panels, compared to 8,000 when Hurricane Maria devastated the island in 2017, leaving some homes without power for over a year. However, repairs are still being made, and the grid remains unreliable. Power outages can occur even on nice days, according to NPR.
“It should not be that 700,000 customers, probably close to 2 million people, lose power in a storm that basically brought a lot of rain and some moderate gusts of wind, but not much else,” Adrian Florido reported, saying people blamed Luma Energy because the company took over the previously state-run infrastructure in 2021.
The company has reduced the number of its assembly line workers by two-thirds and “the downtime is becoming longer and more frequent.”
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