Puerto Rico’s governor expects to restore power “within days.”
The Cantado tourist area in San Juan woke up to a general power outage on the island on September 19, 2022, after Hurricane Fiona hit the Caribbean nation yesterday in San Juan, Puerto Rico. (Jose Jimenez/Getty Images)
Puerto Rico Governor Pedro Pierluzzi told CNN’s Anderson Cooper that the damage caused by Hurricane Fiona on the island of Puerto Rico was related to the rain. AC360 Monday night.
“By the time Val leaves Puerto Rico, we will have received approximately 36 inches of rain. That’s a lot of rain,” he said.
He added that 115,000 of the 1.4 million customers on the island currently have power.
The entire island was reported to be in darkness early Monday morning PowerOutage.us.
In addition, 35% of customers are receiving water services because the water filtration plants have been affected by river flooding and excessive rainfall, the governor said.
Although he said many power lines could not be inspected because Fiona’s remains remained on the island, Pierluisi expressed hope that power would be restored to most customers “in a few days.”
“We’re much better prepared now than we were in Puerto Rico five years ago when Hurricane Maria hit us,” he told Anderson.
“FEMA now has four warehouses across Puerto Rico, so we have enough of FEMA. We have our own distribution and the coordination we have with the municipal, state governments, FEMA has been great so far,” he added.
Pierliucci said the island is still getting a lot of rain, which won’t end until late Tuesday.
“Our network is still weak,” he said of the island’s electricity system.
“It was fixed after Maria, but it didn’t really get better after Maria. We’re working on rebuilding our network to be more reliable and resilient, but it’s a work in progress. It’s by no means accomplished yet,” he said.