PUERTO RICO - 2018 Hurricane Season

"Hurricane season is coming and Puerto Rico still has a big power problem" PBS NewsHour 4/19/2018

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Seven months after Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico and its power grid, the entire island lost power on Wednesday -- the biggest outage since September.  As crews keep working to restore power to the full island, residents are raising questions once again about the adequacy of those efforts.  Amna Nawaz gets an update from special correspondent Monica Villamizar.

Amna Nawaz (NewsHour):  So, you have been reporting on this painfully slow pace of recovery ever since Hurricane Maria hit.

But this doesn’t seem to be related to Maria anymore.  Everyone’s wondering, how does this keep happening?

Monica Villamizar, special correspondent:  Yes, absolutely.  That’s a great question.

Many people — Puerto Ricans right now are being out to sort of be patient and understand, at least by PREPA the power utility company — that keep on asking everybody, be patient and understand that generating electricity and distributing it to everybody is very difficult, and our infrastructure was absolutely decimated by Maria.

But if you stop think, Puerto Ricans are saying, how can we be patient after not having electricity for months on end?  Many people still today do not have power.

Amna Nawaz:  Right.

Monica Villamizar:  And how can it be so complicated?

The truth of the matter is, in all fairness, it is complicated.  And the grades is — was very poorly [badly] damaged, but it was also in very bad conditions.

They have a massive transmission problem right now, which means it’s really fragile and unstable.  So, if you will, you knock down a power — like you say, how can that throw the whole island into darkness?  That’s not normal, normally what happens in other countries.

In Puerto Rico, it’s happening because the system that was put in place and the power grid is so obsolete, that this is the situation they have.

Amna Nawaz:  So, it was a bad problem decimated and made worse by this Category 5 storm seven months ago.

So, who owns the problem?  Who actually has responsibility to try to fix it now?

Monica Villamizar:  That’s a great question.  And that’s sort of what we have been seeing, a political blame-game.

So, the power utility company blames FEMA.  FEMA blames the Corps of Engineers.  Puerto Ricans blame the Trump administration.  Everybody is going to blame everybody.  But in the end, the island is bankrupt.  There is no money.

And to fix this enormous problem is going to take billions and billions of dollars that the island does not have.  So they’re facing a very serious situation, which is fixing a massive problem, fixing it soon, because, remember, hurricane season is going to start again.

Amna Nawaz:  Right.

Monica Villamizar:  And in the meantime, all these local authorities and politicians throwing blame around.

In the end, everybody is to blame in a way.  But what they have to do and what a lot of people are telling me now is that they want to look to local authorities and pass that to sort of try to own the situation, as you say, and make something better for the island, really, try to construct the future themselves.

Amna Nawaz:  And what about people on the ground?  What are they telling you now?  How do they feel after all this time and where they still are today?

Monica Villamizar:  Well, so, most people at the beginning, when we first reported in Puerto Rico, and the generalized feeling was, we are American citizens and we are being treated as secondhand citizens by the company administrations effectively, because the response to our hurricane wasn’t the same as we saw in Florida or Texas, for instance.

And there was no sense of urgency.  But we were here dying and hungry and being affected.

It’s sort of slightly shifted now, and I think they’re looking to their local authorities, to Governor Rossello, to Mayor Carmen Yulin, et cetera, like, what are you going to do to fix our problems?

Because, you know what, in the end, they say they don’t have education because of all this debt restructuring and the consolidations of schools, et cetera.  They don’t have education, they don’t have power, and they don’t have health.

So when a government is not providing that, it’s somewhat failing in its role.  And that’s when people are really going to start asking more of their local authorities and local leaders, because they really need solutions to urgent problems.

And the situation they’re facing right now is, we stay here and make things better, or we have to leave to the mainland.

PUERTO RICO - Solar Energy and Recovery

"Can solar energy speed Puerto Rico’s recovery?  Here’s what it would take" PBS NewsHour 4/4/2018

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  It’s been just over six months since Hurricane Maria slammed into Puerto Rico and roughly 150,000 people still do not have power.  A string of grassroots efforts aims to jumpstart the grid with solar energy.  Science producer Nsikan Akpan explains what they’ll need to see the light.

NEW ORLEANS - Recovery Continuum

"Why New Orleans recovery is a continuation, not a celebration" PBS NewsHour 8/26/2015

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Ten years since Hurricane Katrina brought tragedy to the city of New Orleans, the story of its recovery can read like a tale of two cities.  Marc Morial, Urban League CEO and former mayor, joins Gwen Ifill to take stock of the school system, the need for affordable housing and the enormous task of rebuilding and recovering.

GWEN IFILL (NewsHour):  The future of patient care is only one of the concerns casting a shadow over the Crescent City 10 years later.

A new report out today has a sobering assessment of other problems plaguing its majority African-American community.  Among its findings, in 2005, 44 percent of black children in New Orleans were living in poverty.  That number has gone up to 51 percent.  And the earnings gap between black and white families has increased by 18 percent.  African-American households bring in roughly $25,000 a year, white households $60,000.

The National Urban League study on these and other disparities was released today in New Orleans.

I sat down with CEO Marc Morial to talk about it when I was in the city earlier this week.

Marc Morial, thank you for joining us.

MARC MORIAL, President, National Urban League:  Thanks, Gwen.

GWEN IFILL:  You are the son of a mayor, former state senator, former mayor of New Orleans. And now, as head of the Urban League, you have come out with a report in which you have taken stock of what’s happened in the 10 years since Katrina.  It reads like a tale of two cities.

MARC MORIAL:  It is a tale of two cities.

New Orleans has long been, like many American cities, a tale of two cities.  And I think it’s clear, as you take this snapshot 10 years later, after this tragedy of Katrina, that it’s still a tale of two cities, yes, with great physical rebuilding, yes, a city that survived a tremendous challenge.  But that’s why I think we have to look at this as a commemoration and a continuation, and not a celebration.

GWEN IFILL:  There’s been so much conversation over the years about bouncing back.  You talked about resilience, about the ability of New Orleanians to recreate what had been washed away.

But let’s talk about the issues one by one.  Education, what does your report find?

MARC MORIAL:  So our report finds certainly that you have got a higher high school graduation rate.  But our report also finds that, when it comes to children, there are more children in poverty today than there were before Katrina, and that when it comes to education, while you see signs of progress, there are new schools, there’s improvements in schools, the truth is, is that it’s a school district with fewer students.

It’s true that these reforms have come at a tremendous cost to the city, and that cost was the layoff of some 7,000 mostly African-American unionized teachers almost 10 years ago.  And that’s left, if you will, a scar and pain on the effort to reform the schools.  Now, it’s all about what’s doing best for kids.  But I think it’s important for people to be measured.  At this point, it’s like halftime.