Lawmakers demand faster response; at least 3 mayors take power restoration work into their own hands
By John McPhaul
Amid a flurry of complaints from a number of island towns still partially blacked out following the passage of Tropical Storm Ernesto six days ago, LUMA Energy, the private operator of electric power transmission and distribution, reported Sunday morning that the number of customers without electricity had been reduced to 54,826.
The Caguas region reported 14,650 customers without service, Mayagüez with 13,436 and Carolina with 13,063 as of 7:30 a.m. Sunday. Arecibo also reported 4,102 affected customers, while Ponce and San Juan had 6,223 and 2,411 customers without electricity, respectively. Bayamón had 941 customers without service.
“Our crews have worked hard, often under difficult conditions, to reach our global ETR ahead of schedule,” LUMA President & CEO Juan Saca said in a written statement. “Although we reached this goal, our crews remain focused on restoring power to customers who remain without service in the regions of Caguas, Carolina, Mayagüez and Ponce. These regions were the most affected by Tropical Storm Ernesto. We will work day and night and will not rest until all of our customers have service. In this restoration phase, we want to thank our local, federal and municipal partners. We also thank our customers for their support and commitment to Puerto Rico.”
The company is urging customers to call if they experience service interruptions while line personnel work to restore power to the remaining 10%.
Saca noted that the restoration work has been affected by the lack of access to certain areas, such as line 36,800 from Carolina to Canóvanas, where a broken cable left 70,000 customers without service. Crews were working to make that line ready for service late last week.
In response to complaints from mayors who said the re-energization process is overly bureaucratic, Alejandro González Laboy, LUMA’s director of operations, reiterated how the process of energizing the sectors works and how it is controlled.
“Look at the air traffic controller as an example; when the planes fly there is an air traffic control tower,” he said. “Everything that happens in the air has to be communicated with the control tower, because if not it puts the security of the system, stability, continuity and plans at risk. We operate the same way, we have a control center and the procedure for communicating is through that [center located in Monacillos, San Juan]. Agility is tied to demand. Obviously it is not the same to have 10 cases than to have 100. It may be a little slower, but it is part of our process. Is there an opportunity to improve? Always, but that is the procedure and we have to remain firm in managing communication through that control.”
“Well, after an event like this, there is always a discussion about what happened during the event and then we start making adjustments as we have done every year, each time getting better,” the official added. “There could be information that the mayor has, that someone called him, I don’t know how he got it, but he got it and maybe there is an individual case, we discuss it, we evaluate it and we see how we are improving in the restoration process. But beyond that, when we finish the process, we see how we can be more effective next time.”
Saca responded on Friday, when more than 200,000 LUMA subscribers were still without electricity, to the question of how he rated his performance in restoring electricity service following the passage of Ernesto.
“The LUMA team has done an excellent job in recovering more than 50,000 clients in the last 36 hours and we continue to make constant progress,” he said at a press conference. “We can certainly improve. But the recovery has gone very well. We hope it continues and we make a lot of progress. Today, let us remember that on the first day, Wednesday, we couldn’t do much because the storm was passing. On two occasions, the helicopters had to return, but the team has been working 24/7 here and all over Puerto Rico to recover. I think LUMA did an excellent job in this recovery.”
“I want to make a mention, because beyond what the people of Puerto Rico may say, whether it is a B-minus, a B-plus, a C or whatever, the person who does not have electricity in their house and has spent 48 hours without electricity, is suffering and does not care about the B, or the C, or the D,” Saca added. “So our job here is to recover as many clients as possible as soon as possible and return their electricity and improve their quality of life.”
Meanwhile, the mayors of San Lorenzo (Jaime Alverio Ramos) and Isabela (Miguel “Ricky” Méndez Pérez) have formally announced that they will begin energizing structures in their municipalities, as permitted by a recently approved law. Saca insisted that such work be coordinated with the grid operator to avoid an accident.
“Mayors advocate for their people and they do it very well,” Saca said. “We are in constant communication with them and we listen to them. I have discussed this issue with several mayors lately, in the last 24 hours, and it will be taken into account to review it, but it is very important that we all understand that our number one priority is safety and we cannot be energizing something until we are 100 percent sure that we are not going to have a fatality on the other side. But the feedback has been taken seriously and we take the mayors seriously and we are going to review it.”
On Sunday, Carlos “Johnny” Méndez Nuñez, the New Progressive Party minority leader in the island House of Representatives, demanded that Saca “stop lying” to the people and start to work to reestablish electrical service.
“Vieques and Culebra are half-lit thanks to local generators. Luquillo, Fajardo, Ceiba and Río Grande barely have a little light. The rest of Puerto Rico is basically the same,” the lawmaker said. “It’s for this reason that I don’t understand how he can say that he is ‘doing well.’ I don’t understand this unless he doesn’t know what is happening on the island. You can’t lie to the people. Things aren’t well. We have had three years with LUMA and two since the passage of Hurricane Fiona [in September 2022] and the system is worse today as far as recovery goes.”
“LUMA’s figures do not coincide with reality,” Méndez Nuñez said.
Lawmakers representing 11 towns demand full restoration of electrical service
Popular Democratic Party Reps. Gretchen Hau Irizarry (District 29, Cidra and Cayey), Estrella Martínez Soto (District 27, Aibonito, Coamo, Juana Díaz, Santa Isabel and Salinas) and Jesús “Chui” Hernández Arroyo (District 26, Villalba, Barranquitas, Orocovis and Coamo), demanded on Sunday that the management of LUMA Energy fulfill its commitment to the total energization of Puerto Rico, providing electric power to the municipalities that require it, with the necessary materials to serve the large mountainous areas without electricity, as well as the so-called pockets in communities that, even though registered as energized, have streets or sectors still in the dark.
LUMA, meanwhile, in a press release issued soon after the legislators made their demands known, expressed alarm that the town of Orocovis was carrying out its own electricity restoration.
“For LUMA, security is the greatest priority. For this, our trained personnel are the only ones responsible for the repair and restoration of the electricity grid after Tropical Storm Ernesto,” read the press release. “We are very concerned about the images that we have seen published by the mayor of Orocovis in social media of people working on electrical lines in his municipality without authorization and without the adequate security equipment, which represents an immediate danger for Orocovis residents and for our employees.
Also on Sunday, LUMA sent a letter to Orocovis Mayor Jesús Colón Berlingeri informing him of the unauthorized use of personnel to work on the electrical system against that established by law and of the company’s concerns for the safety of energy customers and workers in the field.
“If we share the desire to restore the electrical service as soon as possible, the restoration of the system must be carried out in the correct and secure way to protect the public and our clients,” read the letter. “We are committed to work together with municipalities to accelerate the efforts of restoration that we have undertaken in daily regional meetings with all the mayors since Tuesday to keep them informed of our progress. What we cannot stop emphasizing is that the work on the transmission and distribution system is and must be completed by trained and capable personnel. [...] All standards of the industry and applicable laws must be followed.”
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