As shown by other natural disasters, it takes time for the government to come find you based on where you live and the amount of damage to roads. If you are remote or located in a place with limited access to your location during good weather it will take longer for them to get to you. I don’t recommend expecting the government to come in the nick of time to save you as your first course of action.
With government regulations about misuse of prescription drugs and insurance companies rules, I do wonder if those who need medication can get an early refill before an expected hurricane or will you get denied due to a government regulation or insurance company rule. You do have some potential warning about a hurricane path.
As for knowing the hurricane was going to hit PR, the same weather forecasters predicted Irma was going to hit Miami and then go up the east coast. A hurricane path predication is difficult. The hurricane center shows within 24 hours there path prediction could be off by 50 nautical miles but it has improved since the 70s.
If you have solar or a home generator, make sure it is installed by professionals otherwise you could be sending electricity back to the grid when a lineman is trying to repair the power lines and be killed.
No one I know has supplies buried anywhere in HI and I don’t see that will help with a tsunami or flooding anyway. Folks here don’t have basements or storm shelters. Many of us aren’t impoverished either, especially those who have beachfront mansions and resorts.
Blaming victims, especially impoverished ones really saddens me. Yes, folks are supposed to prepare as best they can but government is also supposed to prepare and help its citizens, especially when it has advance notice.
When HI has been hit by disasters in the past, we have not been blamed the way PR and Katrina victims are.
@TatinG - it doesn’t matter what shape the electrical system was before Maria. It was scoured into non-existence by the high winds.
Maybe what people need in the hurricane zones are more localized solar power stations. Stations where the panels could be shut down, removed, and placed into a concrete room in the central core of a building if a hurricane is coming. The power source would be more likely to survive the storm and could be more easily reestablished. At least hospitals should have this instead of their generators.
The predictions for Irma moved around in the days before Irma hit. The predictions for Maria did not.
Meterologist John Morales reminds us: “4 days prior to landfall NHC wrote 17 full Hurricane María advisories. Every single one called for landfall in Puerto Rico. 16 of those forecasts called for María to hit as a major hurricane. Remarkable work by NHC. Impact should’ve been no surprise to anyone, anywhere”
There are a lot of issues with buried power lines too. We have some buried and some above ground in our state. Both have various issues – repairing and the buried ones is more time consuming and takes longer. Our nueghbothoid is all above ground.
Ideally, they should bury their power lines but, yes, it won’t happen for the reason mentioned above - it would take too long and people need power ASAP.
So let’s just keep rebuilding a flimsy above-ground power network that hurricanes can continue to knock out, and people will continue to have something to complain about every time there is a storm… great idea.
I would argue that now is the best time to improve their infrastructure, especially since the devastation is still fresh in the minds of politicians and government officials. Why rebuild the entire above ground network, and then rebuild it again when/if they decide to go underground? It’s a complete waste of money.
A little bit of inconvenience up front would buy peace of mind later on. And there are smart ways to rebuild sections of the grid with minimal disruptions.
It costs five times as much to put power lines underground. $2 million a mile is a ballpark figure. Where is the money supposed to come from, and doesn’t the island have about fifty better ways to use money?
SMH. Right now, let’s get people fed, get them housing, any med care they need, and back to work and school.
They can think about the grander wish list later.
In areas, they’re putting up temp elec lines now. Good.
Ya know, some probably think of PR in terms of the touristy experience, the hotels, the beach views. I don’t think all fathom what it means to have a large populace that’s poor, struggling just to make it.
Don’t forget Irma came through the region before Maria. Used up a lot of preparedness I suspect. No time to thoroughly restock. With all of the Florida peninsula affected by Irma, even with a glancing blow, it took time to get back to mostly normal. Yard debris and house debris still a problem and will be for awhile even in Tampa. The FL Keys are open now officially but- still devastated. Took time to get the highway open. Will take more time to be place one wants to vacation, and they need the tourism dollars. PR even more devastated and without as much wealth, tourism a major part of their economy.
Easy to tell people to improve infrastructure. In practice very difficult- has anyone seen local/state/national projects that make sense not done??? btw- looking at photos the landscape is not flat like Florida, or even Midwest flat. It has taken a lot longer to get power back in the more rural areas surrounding Tampa than in the city itself. Many miles of wires to few customers in some cases. Would it be easier to bury lines or string them from hilltop to hilltop? Look at Miami- for years there has been high tide flooding. Has that problem been solved? No. Will it be soon, logically etc? No. So many other examples.
I also understand being marginal. No room in the budget for anything to go wrong. No room to spend money that would save money in the long run.
The Florida governor declared a state of emergency that will help with the expected influx of Puerto Ricans coming and needing public services. Such as school districts adding many pupils and many who haven’t been able to get schooling this fall, and are Spanish speakers. Many have relatives- large extended families- who now can’t stay at home in PR where they want to be. Imagine crowding your middle class house with many extras. Your budget was fine before but now… Oh, and you may have suffered from Irma. The relatives will need to figure out jobs…
New York state has more people with PR roots than any other state. The NY/NJ area will also se an influx of people.
"So let’s just keep rebuilding a flimsy above-ground power network that hurricanes can continue to knock out, and people will continue to have something to complain about every time there is a storm… great idea.
I would argue that now is the best time to improve their infrastructure, especially since the devastation is still fresh in the minds of politicians and government officials. Why rebuild the entire above ground network, and then rebuild it again when/if they decide to go underground? It’s a complete waste of money.
A little bit of inconvenience up front would buy peace of mind later on. And there are smart ways to rebuild sections of the grid with minimal disruptions."
It’s the way it’s done EVERYWHERE. We have ice storms and blizzards up here that knock down lines all the time for decades. We are just know get some underground lines, very slowly. Do you think they replaced downed lines in other natural disasters with underground lines? heck no. This isn’t a PR thing. This is the way our country works as penny wise and pound foolish as it may be.
But you’re right, they should. Put up temporary lines than come back and fix it. It’ll create jobs for one thing. We always talk about infrastructure improvement in this country but it seldom gets done. The last major was push was in the post 2007 crash period for job creation. The president ran on a platform of improving infrastructure. Maybe he should put his money where his mouth is and start with funding improvements for PR. Oops, well, they are citizens but they can’t vote for president so I guess that’s not happening.
These people of PR were aiding and taking in St. John refugees when no one else was there to help them yet from the federal government or their own USVI government. It was civilians from St. Croix and Puerto Rico who came to the rescue, feeding them, and evacuating them. They were there for others. We should be there for them instead of questioning their level of preparedness. They certainly weren’t asking those questions of St. Johnians when they brought food, water, and other supplies on their private boats powered by the fuel they paid for themselves.
Burying power lines isn’t always a black or white decision. Besides being tremendously expensive (5x more), there’s other considerations.
"After a 2002 snow storm left about 2 million customers in North Carolina without electricity, a disaster preparedness task force studied the option of undergrounding the state’s entire power distribution system.
Replacing overhead lines, the task force found, would take a quarter century and $41 billion, increasing average residential customer bills by 125%. Though less likely to fail in a snowstorm, routine repairs to buried lines would take as much as 60% longer, since problem areas are harder to find and the work requires digging equipment.
Ultimately, the task force opposed converting the state’s entire system but urged utilities to research isolated pockets where undergrounding might be cost effective."
The quoted article also discusses why Florida, which is subject to lots of hurricanes, still has most of its power lines above ground.
I don’t see a whole lot of people here blaming the victims. I do see people trying to come up with ways that government-- local government, the government of PR, the US government-- somebody-- should consider to prevent this from ever happening to the people of Puerto Rico ever again.
The reality is that this won’t be their last hurricane. So I think it makes sense in the aftermath of any disaster to take a step back and ask what went wrong that can be corrected for next time. Nope, maybe none of the ideas are workable, I don’t know. But the suggestions are being made with the people of Puerto Rico in mind.
Obviously the needs of the people come first. And everyone I know has contributed to Puerto Rico-- and to Houston and to Florida-- already. From this distance, pretty much all I can do is send a check and to encourage the kids I teach to do likewise-- and I have, on both counts.
The best way to provide a solution for any problem is to start to look at what happened, what went wrong, and possible fixes for what went wrong. The problem is that Puerto Rico, like the other islands in the Carribean, is incredibly likely to be in the crosshairs of future hurricanes and someone needs to try to a) find a way to both keep them safe, b) ensure that supplies are accesssible immediately, and c) ensure that recovery is quick.
So I do think it’s appropriate for us to brainstorm ideas that should be considered to prevent another catastrophe like Maria from ever happening to those poor people again, without people insinuating that .doing so means we’re “blaming the victims.” We’re attempting to solve a problem, that’s all.
“I don’t see a whole lot of people here blaming the victims.”
I disagree. There have been a lot of people doing exactly that and it pretty much matches up to the time the WH started doing it and in direct response to complaints on the timing and commitment of humanitarian relief on the island.
No offense, but have you read the entire thread, @bjkmom?