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Puerto Rican storm victim gets her power back, nearly a year after Hurricane Maria

 
New York Times Jazmín Méndez and Charlie Colón laugh with their daughter, Luana Colón Mendez, 2, as she gazes at a lit lamp Tuesday.\uFEFF
New York Times Jazmín Méndez and Charlie Colón laugh with their daughter, Luana Colón Mendez, 2, as she gazes at a lit lamp Tuesday.\uFEFF
Published Aug. 14, 2018

PONCE, Puerto Rico — Jazmín Méndez has lived much of the last year in the dark. No light to read by. No food cooled in the fridge. No television for her three children.

Work crews have repaired storm-damaged Puerto Rico's electricity grid in fits and starts over the past 11 months, but they had never managed to light up Méndez's mountaintop home — until this week, when she became among the last residential customers of the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority to have service restored.

"The first thing I will do is give thanks to God," she said, sitting in her living room surrounded by beach coolers, water jugs and gas cans. "At first, I fell into a depression. Now we've gotten so used to it, that I'm sure if another hurricane comes, we'll pass the test."

It has been a long wait for Méndez, 44, who has experienced firsthand the many woes that the island's population suffered after Hurricane Maria.

The storm washed out the pipes that brought freshwater to her home in the rural Ponce neighborhood of Real Anón. Her generator was stolen last year, and she did not get a new one from a local church until two weeks ago. Parts of her zinc roof blew off, and now it leaks, but problems with her deed disqualified her for Federal Emergency Management Agency assistance. Using rainwater out of barrels gave Méndez a waterborne kidney infection that landed her in the hospital for nearly three months.

After spending $3.2 billion, erecting some 52,000 new electrical poles and stringing 6,000 miles of wire from the federal government alone, the Puerto Rico electricity system is not in much better condition now than it was before Maria cut power to every home and business on the island.

The new head of the electric utility estimates that up to one-quarter of the work done hurriedly to illuminate Puerto Rico after the storm will have to be redone.

"There are many patches — too many patches — developed just to bring power to the people," said José Ortiz, the new chief executive of the power authority, known as PREPA. "Now we have to redo that thing."

For the Méndez family, the chance to have electric service again mostly means not having to spend $50 a week on fuel for their generator, an expense that Jazmín Méndez, a stay-at-home mother who relies on public assistance, can hardly afford.

The government installed a new water cistern, but FEMA denied her the money she needed to install the required new pipes. So, even with the power back on, she will still have to get water every day by traveling down the mountain, past the landslides that frequently cause flat tires.