The NYT has a surprisingly good Article on the failure of Puerto Rico to get its electricity grid back in order after Hurricane Maria. The article tries mightily to lay some blame on the Trump administration’s door, but when the reader digs into the meat of the article, it becomes clear the majority of the problems are with the territorial government and the state owned electric company, PREPA:
I’m not sure if this was in the article, (I only skimmed it) but a friend of mine has relatives in PR and told me this interesting tidbit of information…
Before the hurricane (for many years in fact) a significant portion of PR residents were supplied their juice via a plethora of illegal power taps. The local criminal gangs control those. When the electric linesmen come in and hook up everyone in the town, the residents might think, “OK cool, now I just have to pay the electric company and not pay the gangs for electricity”.
The gangs however don’t see it that way.
Thus the reluctance of the PREPA guys to actually finish the hookups, out of fear of the reaction of those criminal gangs.
Addendum: This is indeed a third hand story, but it sounds pretty plausible.
