Six Months Post Maria

San Juan Metro is fine... out on the island , not so much.   140,000 + are still without lights, many are still without homes and all that a "home" needs.   The issue is, What do they do once the lights come back on???   We continue to make weekly mission trips to areas with no lights, no medical help and not much else; we recently began helping a beekeeper who lost his hives and is keeping his bees in old metal drums until he can get new hives.  We are selling his honey at Church on Sunday in San Juan.   You can follow our work on Parroquia San Agustin, Puerta De Tierra.

Are you on Instagram to follow? If so, please provide your handle. Thanks for sharing and helping with the recovery. My wife has been helping with Second Union Church in Guaynabo.

Tuesday will be six months.

Electricity is still a problem, mainly in rural areas but also in some parts of the metro area. When people have power they will suffer blackouts every now and then.
Here's the latest infographic of the USACE:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DYaWTNUU0AEPzfJ.jpg

Some (many?) don't trust the numbers they publish.

Anyway, we're still far away of the complete restoration of the electrical grid. Even then we still need a couple of new power plants to replace the old crappy plants.

Unfortunately the next Hurricane season will be here soon.

Yes - and we just got hit with the super high surf - let’s hope for the best

There’s been a lot of footage on social media of the super high turf. Very scary! Thanks for sharing the chart and link. We’re one of the people not trusting the numbers being reported by the media due to the conficting reports. Seems the best reliable sources are the people in  towns sharing what they see and are living through.

I lived on the coast of the gulf of Alaska for five years, extensive experience on the ocean fishing. 
Never in my life have I experienced such high surf / waves as we had here on the north coast of PR during the recent event. Absolutely the most violent seas I have seen.  The waves off shore must have been at least 25 / 30’.  The surf smashed into our patio filling it with trash. 

We needed heavy equipment to clear the debris from the beach front yard. Just today got the s**t cleared off the beach.  🤗

Back to the subject, six months after Maria.

David Begnaud from CBS, who has been reporting about the recovery efforts a lot, returned to the island for the six months anniversary.

Here's his first report: https://www.cbsnews.com/video/six-month … out-power/

I thought these comparison pictures (September 2017 and March 2018) were interesting:

https://nypost.com/2018/03/22/puerto-ri … a/slide-1/

FYI:

https://721news.com/top-story/2018-hurr … -70-years/

SawMan wrote:

I thought these comparison pictures (September 2017 and March 2018) were interesting:

https://nypost.com/2018/03/22/puerto-ri … a/slide-1/

Thank you so much SawMan for sharing. These pictures really did a good job in capturing the recovery in certain areas of the island.

Gary wrote:

Back to the subject, six months after Maria.

David Begnaud from CBS, who has been reporting about the recovery efforts a lot, returned to the island for the six months anniversary.

Here's his first report: https://www.cbsnews.com/video/six-month … out-power/

He did a phenomincal job reporting on the current situation and has been wonderful with his journalism in general regarding Puerto Rico. Thanks for sharing the link.

SawMan wrote:

I thought these comparison pictures (September 2017 and March 2018) were interesting:

https://nypost.com/2018/03/22/puerto-ri … a/slide-1/

Love the fotos

To be honest, other than the repaired road in Toa Alta, there's not a lot of repair visible. Debris have been cleaned, there are plenty of blue roofs (but no new roofs), the water is gone from flooded roads, nature is bouncing back.

Now, I know roofs have been renewed here and there and bridges have been repaired, roads repaired or made usable again. But there's not a lot structural repair done to buildings and infrastructure.

The way the repair of the electrical grid is done is basicaly bringing it back in the state it was before Maria. Obviously there's a law that prevents FEMA and the USACE to do improvements. (David Begnaud covered this in his interview with col. Kirk of the USACE) .

With roughly 100,000 houses still without power and USACE winding down their involvement it may take months more to reconnect every house.
In my neighborhood I witnessed how that goes after the US crews were pulled out. To my surprise the area behind our house, roughly 30 houses, was powered up today by PREPA. Some high voltage distribution lines came down to like 6' from the ground  and very close to a couple of trees during the storm, poles are lopsided. What did the PREPA crew do? Let's power it up and see if the fuse blows. It did not to everybody's surprise, including the linemen, so they left. The houses have power, yes, but the first breeze will cause a blackout. This is the way PREPA has always handled blackouts around here. Wait until the bad weather is over, put in a new fuse, hope it doesn't blow, wait a couple of minutes and if it still doesn't blow they are moving on.

PREPA doesn't want or isn't able to do the job the right way. With another very active hurricane season around the corner things don't look good.

Very likely power will be down at the next hurricane, even a Cat 1 will take it down. Fixing with chewing gum and spit. Army Corp said they were restoring for speed, not even to the level it was prior to the storm so the Infractructure is as sensitive or more to disruption.

Assuming the money comes in it is going to be many years before PR has a hurricane resistant Infractructure. Many years.

Gary, do you know of any of your neighbors losing their appliances due to the electrical on/off issues?  I heard of some losing them on the west coast.

Schuttzie wrote:

Gary, do you know of any of your neighbors losing their appliances due to the electrical on/off issues?  I heard of some losing them on the west coast.

That has been happening all over the place, yes. When the power goes and is reconnected again, a surge can damage equipment. Microwaves, fridges and freezers, computers, you name it. A neighbor lost a microwave oven, I lost a (brand new, six-port) battery charger for my power tool battery packs that we used to run small fans at night.

There are surge protectors to help with that and there are even whole house ones. It is unavoidable. The AEE has a program where you can claim loses like that but few ever get anything as it is hard to prove and a very lengthy process.

What a nightmare! Especially with hurricane season right around the corner.

Have not experienced any of this  here on the South coast. Some folks I talked to had water and electric two weeks after Maria.  We were without electric for a couple of hours once in  three months.

One power surge is enough to kill unprotected devices. Better be safe than sorry.