More than eight months after Hurricane Maria tore across Puerto Rico and knocked out power to virtually the entire island of 3.3 million people, full power restoration remains another two months away, authorities said Thursday.
The new hurricane season officially begins Friday, but the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority says workers are still scrambling to repair damage from the last one.
“It’s 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.
Power authority director Walt Higgins told the Associated Press that only about 11,000 customers remain without power. The authority's Twitter account posted photos of workers stringing electrical wire in the sun.
"We continue to give the maximum to reach the goal of energizing all of our customers," one tweet said.
Higgins said the authority has awarded a $500 million contract to Florida-based MasTec to help finish the job and build a more efficient power grid. The final price tag to fully strengthen the island's power grid could reach $8 billion, he said.
Higgins comments came as Rossello met with Florida Gov. Rick Scott "to discuss the preparation for hurricanes and needs of our Puerto Rican community in the state."
Maria rolled across Puerto Rico on Sept. 20 as a Category 4 hurricane with winds of 155 mph, the strongest storm to hit the island in 89 years and among the strongest ever to strike the United States. The storm came two weeks after Hurricane Irma hammered the U.S. territory.
Restoring power to the island has been bumpy. Last month, more than 1.4 million homes and businesses across Puerto Rico lost electricity when workers removing a fallen tower hit a high transmission line.
Earlier this week, Harvard researchers released a study indicating Hurricane Maria likely killed about 5,000 people across Puerto Rico last year, more than 70 times the official estimate.
