Puerto Ricans seething over lack of power days after Fiona

[Omaha Steve]

Source: AP

By DÁNICA COTO

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Half of Puerto Rico is without power more than five days after Hurricane Fiona struck — including an entire town where not a single work crew has arrived.

Many on the U.S. territory are angry and incredulous, and calls are growing for the ouster of the island’s private electricity transmission and distribution company.

Fuel disruptions are worsening the situation, forcing grocery stores, gas stations and other businesses to close and leaving apartment buildings in the dark because there is no diesel for generators.

Many are questioning why it is taking so long to restore power since Fiona was a Category 1 storm that did not affect the entire island, and whose rain — not wind — inflicted the greatest damage.



Nancy Galarza looks at the damage that Hurricane Fiona inflicted on her community, which remained cut off four days after the Category 1 storm slammed the rural community of San Salvador in the town of Caguas, Puerto Rico, Thursday, Sept. 22, 2022. (AP Photo/Danica Coto)


Read more: https://apnews.com/article/storms-hurricanes-puerto-rico-san-juan-04096675bdafe6629b6507b01d8b99d4?utm_source=homepage&utm_medium=TopNews&utm_campaign=position_05

[Roy Rolling]

1. "Run Like a Business"

Whenever you hear that phrase, understand it not to mean better, but ruthlessly efficient at extracting assets from its host.

A successful business reinvests and grows. A Trump-run business cannibalizes itself into death.

Modern business has no safeguards, just plans for growth. When the unexpected strike, those businesses fail. They can’t serve customers, they go bankrupt.

Fuck these profit-driven parasites like for-profit schools, hospitals, and jails.

Now, some greedy (business) fucks have bankrupted the power grid in Puerto Rico.

[Lonestarblue]

2. The same model for the entire private equity industry.

Buy a business, fire as many employees as possible, strip its assets, then unload what’s left. Some rural hospitals were forced to close because they were bought by private equity firms. I wish we could make them illegal because most are nothing but vultures.

It seems that Puerto Rico has had poor and corrupt governance for decades. We need to make them a state and insist on some changes.

[former9thward]

15. We need to give them independence

There is no evidence they want statehood. The last statehood advisory vote most people boycotted.

[Delphinus]

21. I heard an NPR interview last week

With their (R) rep., and she said they definitely want to be a state.

Never having lived through a hurricane, I am not sure that five days after wiping out so much on the island is a long time.

[scarletlib]

3. Absolutely the truth.

This business can do it better crap is ruining the country.

[paleotn]

11. What really kills me about that is the old joke about government contracting.....

"We're in the hands of the lowest bidder!" Um, sorry, but private business does the same thing, only on steroids. Driven supposedly by the fiduciary responsibility to share holders to hit quarterly and annual projections. No one gives two shits about decades down the road. How many times in my 30 plus years in private industry have I seen..."minimize cost by all means and don't worry about it. You'll be long retired when things really go to shit because your short sighted, money grubbing actions." If I had a dollar for every instance of that, I'd have retired long ago.

[bronxiteforever]

9. +100 Absolutely!

[paleotn]

10. If it's going to be private, you've got to have iron clad regulation and oversight...

There's no other way to keep a natural monopoly in check. That's how it works in the continental US with municiple and state regulators, FERC and NERC. Though far from perfect, Texas, it still keeps private utilities in check for the most part. How that works in Puerto Rico, I have no clue, but apparently not too good.

Time for the Feds to step in, nationalize the Puerto Rican electrical grid and spend what's necessary to modernize and harden it. Sorry, but that's part of the cost of having "colonies". At least from a moral standpoint anyway.

[former9thward]

16. Maybe we should free the colony

Is that too radical in 2022?

[Alexander Of Assyria]

4. AP. Always looking for the black thread. Many say this...many say that...can make up

whatever you like…just talk to a few and call them many.

[Kid Berwyn]

5. We could've rebuilt the grid, but, you know. Money. And.

[COL Mustard]

6. Biden needs to go to PR

To show leadership. To be seen there, and to help distribute aid. He can't be like that ugly fat fuck in the picture above.

[Kid Berwyn]

7. A Biden visit would show the difference between Democrats and...

…the GZP.

Go as soon as possible and contrast the split-screen images until Election Day.

Outstanding idea, COL Mustard.

[COL Mustard]

8. I'm actually surprised the professionals haven't already planned a trip.

Doesn't have to be long, but he needs to be seen there, and not just in San Juan.

[Bayard]

12. When in the world

Are we going to make PR a state? Its ridiculous for the U.S. to still have, "territories."

[SunSeeker]

13. It will happen over the GOP 's dead body.

So we need to hasten the GOP's demise. It's not even a real political party anymore. It's a cult.

[Bayard]

17. And, I'd be okay with that!

[SunSeeker]

14. They didn't rebuild properly from Maria because of corruption by these private utilities.

And a lot of the aid money was sucked up by Trumper grifters, like the 2-employee Montana firm who landed Puerto Rico's biggest contract to get the power back on after Maria in October of 2017.

The company, Whitefish Energy, said last week that it had signed a $300 million contract with the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority to repair and reconstruct large portions of the island's electrical infrastructure. The contract is the biggest yet issued in the troubled relief effort.
...
Whitefish officials have said that the company's expertise in mountainous areas makes it well suited for the work and that it jumped at the chance when other firms were hesitating over concerns about payment. The company acknowledges it had only two full-time employees when Maria struck but says its business model calls for ramping up rapidly by hiring workers on short-term contracts.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/small-montana-firm-lands-puerto-ricos-biggest-contract-to-get-the-power-back-on/2017/10/23/31cccc3e-b4d6-11e7-9e58-e6288544af98_story.html

[OneCrazyDiamond]

18. They tried, but that contract was cancelled.

[SunSeeker]

19. The scum who the Trump administration replaced Whitefish with were even worse.

The company that took over the work after Whitefish left -- Cobra Acquisitions -- ended up charging the government far more than Whitefish, according to PREPA budget documents. It also fell into legal trouble: Two Cobra executives and a FEMA official were arrested in 2019 and charged with federal bribery and fraud crimes.

And it's not like Ryan Zinke's buddies at Whitefish learned their lesson. A new company co-led by Andy Techmanski, the CEO of Whitefish Energy, signed a no-bid, $4 million PPE contract in late June of 2020 to provide reusable isolation gowns for the Department of Veterans Affair. That contract was never rescinded.

[OneCrazyDiamond]

20. My bad. I misunderstood.

I thought you were referencing the contract to Whitefish in PR following Maria. That is the contract that, thanks to a functioning press, was cancelled.

There are so many crimes committed under that dark administration, I doubt we will prosecute them all. I kinda wonder if 1/6 was setup to bog the DOJ down so the big fish swim free. Of course the other side is run by idiots, so...