Hurricane Fiona struck Puerto Rico's southwest coast on Sunday as it unleashed landslides, knocked the power grid out and ripped up asphalt from roads and flung the pieces around.
Forecasters said the storm would cause massive flooding and threatened to dump "historic" levels of rain, with up to 25 inches (64 centimeters) possible in isolated areas.
"The damages that we are seeing are catastrophic," said Gov. Pedro Pierluisi.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/hurricane-threat-tropical-storm-fiona-040217066.html
I don't know what it's going to take, but PR has to figure out how to harden its power grid. This is happening almost literally every year now.
I've family there - they are all safe, and relatively unaffected.
The issues are multifaceted unfortunately. One of the leading factors is corruption in the government, both on the local level and higher up.
Following that is that a considerable chunk of the island live near the major cities and should get power back pretty quick. The standard of living is ..ok.. there, but by no means is it prosperous. Lack of jobs on the island (one of the reasons you see so many Ricans in the military). And a divided populace on Independence/Statehood/status Quo. I told the wife: "I could retire here in a heartbeat, but there's no way we could ever 'live' here..."
The physical challenges as well - remember Puerto Rico is a mountainous island, and as such the electric grid runs along high Tension lines, since drilling through rock is costly. Think of Appalachia and what would happen if they got hit with a hurricane. Do I think it should be looked at? Fer sure. But when you sit down and look at the math, it's a multi-decade project to solve honestly what is the occasional 'inconvenience'.