CAIN ALTO, Puerto Rico (AP) After months of darkness and stifling heat, Noe Pagan was overjoyed when power-line workers arrived to restore electricity to his home deep in the lush green mountains of western Puerto Rico. But to his dismay, instead of raising a power pole toppled by Hurricane Maria, the federal contractors bolted the new 220-volt line to the narrow trunk of a breadfruit tree a safety code violation virtually guaranteed to leave Pagan and his neighbors blacked out in a future hurricane.
I asked the contractors if they were going to connect the cable to the post and they just didnt answer, said Pagan, a 23-year-old garage worker.
After an eight-month, $3.8 billion federal effort to try to end the longest blackout in United States history, officials say Puerto Ricos public electrical authority, the nations largest, is almost certain to collapse again when the next hurricane hits this island of 3.3 million people.
Its a highly fragile and vulnerable system that really could suffer worse damage than it suffered with Maria in the face of another natural catastrophe, Puerto Rican Gov. Ricardo Rossello said.
Another weather disaster is increasingly likely as warmer seas turbocharge the strongest hurricanes into even more powerful and wetter storms. Federal forecasters say theres a 75 percent likelihood that the 2018 Atlantic hurricane season, which begins Friday, will produce between five and nine hurricanes. And theres a 70 percent chance that as many as four of those could be major Category 3, 4, or 5 hurricanes, with winds of 111 mph or higher.
Its inevitable that Puerto Rico will get hit again, said Assistant Secretary Bruce Walker, head of the U.S. Department of Energys Office of Electricity, which is planning the long-term redesign of the grid run by the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority.
