SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS RADIO) – Hurricane Fiona hit Puerto Rico's coastline on Sunday.
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Although weaker than the devastating Maria in 2017, the storm caused landslides, evacuations and rescues, and knocked out the island's already fragile power grid.
"The problem was that after the emergency repairs were done for Maria back in 2018, we didn’t follow through on the second stage, which was actually strengthening and making the system more resilient," said Sergio Marxuach, policy director at the Center for a New Economy, a Puerto Rico-based nonpartisan think tank on KCBS Radio on Monday.
"Essentially we had a very fragile system that was hit by 85 miles per hour winds yesterday," he said, leaving the island entirely without power.
Now, next steps are to assess the level of damage done to the grid and find out what exactly has been broken.
"And basically restart from scratch and rethink where we're going, hopefully do it better and do it right this time," he said.
Progress was slow going the last time around, with some households going without power for up to a year after the storm, according to Marxauch.
To better sure up the grid against these types of storms, underground power lines are necessary, but putting those in can be incredibly costly.
"In addition what you want to have is a grid that can be divided in segments, so when one segment of the grid gets hit, the other ones can keep continuing providing power," he said.
In order to do that though, power needs to be distributed all over the island, and right now the grid relies on centralized power stations. So if one part of the grid is affected, the entire grid is.
But even before that, the most immediate area of concern right now is helping people stranded in flooded areas.
"Saving lives is obviously priority number one," he said. Priority number two would be the assessment of the damage to the power system.
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