XPost: soc.culture.puerto-rico, alt.global-warming, sac.politics   
   XPost: soc.retirement   
   From: dharris@splcenter.org   
      
   More than five months after Hurricanes Irma and Maria knocked   
   out power to Marisol Rodriguez’s home in San Juan, Puerto Rico,   
   the lights finally came back on Friday.   
      
   “I started to cry,” she said.   
      
   On Sunday afternoon, her jubilant neighborhood, Cupey, made a   
   feast of traditional dishes — rice and beans, roast pork, potato   
   salad — for the electrical brigade workers who had been   
   restoring power to the area. “It was a great time,” Rodriguez   
   said.   
      
   By 9 p.m., the power was out again.   
      
   An explosion and a fire at an electrical substation on Sunday   
   night knocked out power to parts of San Juan as well as several   
   other northern municipalities in the metro area, utility   
   officials said. The latest blackout highlighted how fragile the   
   island's electrical system remains as the U.S. territory has   
   struggled to recover from the Category 4 and 5 hurricanes that   
   essentially wiped out power to the whole island.   
      
   By Monday, electricity had been restored to “a majority” of the   
   customers who were affected by Sunday’s outage, according to the   
   Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA). Power had returned   
   to Puerto Rico’s largest public hospital and its main   
   international airport, according to The Associated Press.   
      
   “At the moment, most of the clients that were affected by this   
   event already have electricity service and we are working to   
   restore the service as soon as possible to the remaining clients   
   in the sectors of Trujillo Alto and Cupey," Justo González   
   Torres, PREPA’s executive director, said in a statement Monday.   
      
   Photos posted to PREPA’s Twitter account showed charred   
   equipment where a switch exploded at the substation in Monacillo.   
      
   "We started a damage assessment process to see what failed,"   
   González said in the statement. "We understand that it could   
   have been a mechanical failure within the system. We have to   
   look at the lines that arrive at the Monacillo Transmission   
   Center and check the substations that were affected."   
      
   More than 75 percent of customers, or more than 1.1 million   
   people, now have their electricity restored, PREPA said.   
      
   But that leaves more than 400,000 PREPA customers still without   
   power nearly five months after Hurricane Maria made landfall.   
      
   Recovery efforts have been marred by the island's outdated power   
   grid, a lack of supplies and a controversial contract that was   
   later canceled.   
      
   The indebted power authority "has a long history of sloppy   
   management and a lack of transparency," which has created a lot   
   of distrust in Puerto Rico, said Cecille Blondet, the executive   
   director of Espacios Abiertos, or Open Spaces, an advocacy group   
   that is calling for more transparency in the Puerto Rican   
   government.   
      
   "It's obvious the fragility of the system continues and that   
   we're not back to where we were," she said. "Even the people   
   that have no power, they have no certainty whether that power is   
   going to continue to be supplied or not."   
      
   Rodriguez said the anger and anxiety of the last few months   
   returned when the power went out again on Sunday.   
      
   “It was frustrating," she said. "They didn’t let me get used to   
   having light."   
      
   Although her family used a generator after the storm for a few   
   hours each day, she said “you never get used to” living without   
   electricity for that long. Rodriguez's home had its power   
   restored again early Monday, but she said she was worried that   
   she would have to continue to deal with outages.   
      
   “You are always with uncertainty," she said.   
      
   Last month, Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rosselló announced that he   
   would privatize the island’s electrical authority, painting a   
   bleak picture of PREPA, which owes some $9 billion.   
      
   "What we know today as the Electric Power Authority does not   
   work and cannot continue to operate like this," he said. The   
   system is 28 years older than the average electrical utility in   
   the U.S., Rosselló added in a televised speech.   
      
   Blondet said privatization in itself would not be a quick   
   solution for the people of Puerto Rico, and her organization was   
   concerned about competing interests involved in the process.   
      
   "We don't see a solution in the near future for this situation,"   
   she said.   
      
   "The blackout last night once again left us in the dark, not   
   only because we had no power but because we had little   
   information as to what was happening," she said. "Even people   
   with power now, we continue to be in the dark."   
      
   https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/puerto-rico-crisis/puerto-rico-   
   s-latest-blackout-shows-island-s-fragility-five-n847311   
      
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    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)