This browser is not fully supported. Please update for the best experience.
Logo of The Washington Post
Loading

SinLuz

Life Without Power

Published December 14, 2017

Scroll to continue

This presentation has sound. Scroll to continue.

Puerto Rico’s apagón, or “super blackout,” is the longest and largest major power outage in modern U.S. history. Without electricity, there is no reliable source of clean water. School is out, indefinitely. Health care is fraught. Small businesses are faltering. The tasks of daily life are both exhausting and dangerous. There is nothing to do but wait, and no one can say when the lights will come back on. Lee este artículo en español.

Published December 14, 2017

Scroll to continue

Loading

Tap for volume

Show transcript

RAFAEL SURILLOMayor of Yabucoa

You can mark our history as pre-Maria and post-Maria.

[Hurricane Maria] came to either straighten Puerto Rico out or make it anew.

The little we had, we lost.

I feel abandoned by the state.

Basically the world changed. Everything changed.

Stability won’t get here until the power is back.

Without power, life is very hard.

Loading

Your browser does not appear to support WebGL. This interactive requires WebGL and a modern browser.

Learn how to enable WebGL in your browser

Two powerful hurricanes devastated Puerto Rico in September. They created a humanitarian crisis for the island’s 3.4 million U.S. citizens that has persisted for three months. Power restoration is at a crawl because the grid collapsed, the utility is bankrupt and the logistics are daunting: Crews and supplies have to come from the mainland, then make their way into rugged interior areas like Utuado. Many roads remain impassable, and hundreds are still isolated.

Two powerful hurricanes devastated Puerto Rico in September. They created a humanitarian crisis for the island’s 3.4 million U.S. citizens that has persisted for three months. Power restoration is at a crawl because the grid collapsed, the utility is bankrupt and the logistics are daunting: Crews and supplies have to come from the mainland, then make their way into rugged interior areas like Utuado. Many roads remain impassable, and hundreds are still isolated.

Loading

The deluge of rain created mudslides that toppled transmission lines, broke water pipes and pushed homes down hills. The family that lived in this house escaped just in time. The green lushness has returned to the mountains, though it is broken by huge gashes of mud.

Reconstruction of the scene
Loading

Tap for volume

Reconstruction of the scene.

Loading

Afraid that the slope supporting her house would collapse into the lake below, Maria Ortiz Viruet moved two doors away, to her mother’s house. She is a veteran public school teacher who has weathered storms of all kinds. But nothing prepared her for this darkness.

Loading

Tap for volume

Show transcript

Maria Ortiz ViruetTeacher

Maria left me with nothing.

We are not getting basic services like water or electricity.

My daily routine has been affected.

To get the coffee ready we have to use the water that we’re given, the potable bottled water.

I have to go to the mountain spring to find water, with a bucket to be able to take a bath,

carry the water to wash the dishes, the plates and the silverware.

It’s hard.

subhead-decoration

Like most teachers across the island, Maria reports to work each day at an empty school.

Marta Lafontaine Elementary school in Utuado, Puerto Rico.

Loading
subhead-decoration

Like most teachers across the island, Maria reports to work each day at an empty school.

No power and no water means no school for many of the territory’s more than 1,000 schools — and total disruption to the lives of tens of thousands of children. They have lost their daily routine of classes, friends and meals.

Most have not been to school at all this fall. With each passing day, educators realize they are waiting for students who may never come back.

Maria can’t get used to the emptiness.

Loading

Tap for volume

Show transcript

Maria Ortiz ViruetTeacher

I studied here from first grade until ninth grade.

That is why I love my school,

I love my community.

It feels really sad

to get to the classroom every day.

The children’s smiles are missing.

We teachers are going to school because the instructions that were given to us

at first were to fix the school, remove debris, clean the rooms

to have the school in optimal condition.

And we’re waiting as well for the team of engineers to come and certify that the school

is ready to receive the children.

They will be gravely affected if we don’t act immediately.

Loading
Loading

Instead of classwork, children get lessons in catching mountain water to do the wash. On the mainland, school districts in Florida, Texas, New York and New England have absorbed thousands of students who don’t want to fall behind. But those who stayed — including Maria’s son, Jesús, 18 — are about to lose an entire semester.

But those who remain — including Maria’s son, Jesús, who is 18 — don’t know what will happen next.

Loading

Tap for volume

Show transcript

Jesús Manuel Mejía OrtizMaria's son

I really need my school. It’s my last year. I believe that high school is important.

People have told me many times to enjoy high school. How am I going to enjoy it like this after this disaster?

There is one more thing to learn, and I will finally know

all the basics of welding. And I will have my diploma.

It is my last year, and I don’t know what’s going to happen.

Loading

What he does know: Nearly every day, the generator needs some kind of fix. When it breaks down, out come the candles and flashlights.

Loading

The buzzing of fuel-powered generators is inescapable. Their din is the new background noise of the night, the motors roaring to life all across the island at dusk.

Expensive to buy and fill, smelly and dangerous, the machines were never intended to be a substitute for public electricity.

subhead-decoration
Loading
subhead-decoration

A household can limp along on a generator, but it has been perilous for Puerto Rico’s elderly and infirm to rely on the machines for months on end.

Many of them need power just to breathe. Since the storm, there has been a surge of deaths from pneumonia, diabetes, Alzheimer's and breathing disorders compared with the same period in 2016. The toll could rise over 1,000, some estimate.

All the advances of modern medicine are useless without electricity. How to run oxygen machines and nebulizer treatments? How to sterilize equipment and refrigerate medicine?

Thousands of the chronically sick live at home and are too poor or too frail to keep a generator filled and running. The fumes can trigger more breathing problems. It falls to family members and community health workers to improvise and soldier on.

Aixa Jiménez (left) talks with Teresa Irizarry about her mother, Margarita.

Loading

Aixa Jiménez, a home hospice nurse, spends more time caring for her patients, including Margarita, 94, who has Alzheimer’s disease. Helping Margarita live with dignity and keeping her clean and comfortable are more complicated since the hurricane hit.

Loading

Tap for volume

Show transcript

Teresa Irizarry

The nurse, Aixa,

She’s a beautiful human being.

We’ve learned a lot from her.

She’s helped us a lot taking care of Mom.

Aixa Jiménez Nurse, San Lucas Home Hospice We faced a challenge with her because she uses oxygen continuously.

It was difficult to provide therapy, change the bed position, and to lift her up.

She has to come up with new therapies on the spot. Héctor Pérez, who has a lung disease and shouldn’t get overheated, no longer has working air conditioning.

Loading
Loading

Tap for volume

Show transcript

Hector PerezHospice Patient

We don't have water yet.

I was in the Marine Corps. I spent five years and nine months in the service.

I joined when I was 17 years old and here I am. I'm still alive.

Lydia Zeda Reyes Hector’s Wife After the hurricane, as you know, no one in Utuado had power or water service,

which was hard for him because he needs oxygen, and he gets overheated.

He used this hand fan to have air because we didn’t have a generator or a place to install one.

subhead-decoration
Loading
subhead-decoration

The Spanish verb “to struggle” is bregar, but it means much more on this island.

When Puerto Ricans use this word, as they do constantly post-Maria, they are describing gritty determination. It’s the deeply cultural will to not just survive scarcity and hardship but also to use creativity and humor to thrive within it. On busted power poles and crumbling overpasses are Puerto Rico’s flag and this scrawled message: “Yo no me quito,” or “I won’t give up.”

That spirit has propelled people to devise river crossings where bridges are washed out. Neighbors have formed brigades to clear roads with machetes and run cables from a single generator to light several homes.

ELECTRICITY OUTPUT RESTORED

100%

Sept. 20

Maria makes landfall

80

60

61.4%

40

34%

20

0

Dec. 13

Sept. 7

Irma grazes the island

Source: Department of Energy

ELECTRICITY OUTPUT

RESTORED

Sept. 20

Maria makes landfall

100%

80

60

61.4%

40

34%

20

0

Dec. 13

Sept. 7

Irma grazes the island

Source: Department of Energy

But no amount of community resourcefulness can string electric line and rebuild highways. It took nearly two weeks for the territorial government and U.S. agencies to deliver relief to the hardest-hit communities. Politics and bureaucratic squabbles continue to bog down recovery.

While they wait on government, Puerto Ricans are demonstrating what they mean by bregar.

Loading
Loading

Three months after Maria, basic survival seems more like subsistence. The residents of Rio Abajo were cut off from food, water and supplies when the bridge to their rural homes collapsed. They had to get across the river.

The hurricane’s rains triggered bridge collapses in rural barrios of Utuado, leaving residents to fend for themselves.

Three months after Maria, basic survival seems more like subsistence. The residents of Rio Abajo were cut off from food, water and supplies when the bridge to their rural homes collapsed. Syndia Maria Sotomayor Torres’ family invented a wood cart and pulley system to cross the river.

Loading

Tap for volume

Show transcript

Syndia Maria Sotomayor TorresUtuado resident

The idea actually came from my son Dennis. “Daddy why don’t we create a

basket and cross the river?” And we thought about it for a few days until they were able to build it

to have access to the main roads and bring food.

They call it the zip line. I don't know if that's the right name,

but when we use it we feel like we could fly.

It’s the only way to get out of here, and it has been really helpful for us.

For every ingenious workaround, there are a dozen reminders of how life used to be.

Loading

Tap for volume

Show transcript

Syndia Maria Sotomayor TorresUtuado resident

Living without electricity is hard

because we were used to living a certain way, just arriving home and turning on the lights.

And still after more than 30 days with no power, we still enter a room and automatically flip the switch, and then I say to myself, “What am I doing?”

We are trying to persevere. People have told us to leave,

but this is our home. This is not just a house, it is our home.

For Syndia and her family, the mountain life they chose now tests their endurance.

Loading

Your browser does not appear to support WebGL. This interactive requires WebGL and a modern browser.

Learn how to enable WebGL in your browser

For many Puerto Ricans who make their homes in population centers, the storm’s aftermath has been equally merciless. In coastal regions like Yabucoa, the upheaval touches every facet of city life.

subhead-decoration

For many Puerto Ricans who make their homes in population centers, the storm’s aftermath has been equally merciless.

In coastal regions like Yabucoa, the upheaval touches every facet of city life.

Sunset brings near total darkness to Yabucoa as dusk descends.

In three months, not a single light bulb in Yabucoa has been illuminated by the power grid.

Loading
subhead-decoration

In 12 weeks, not a single light bulb in Yabucoa has been illuminated by the power grid.

The baseball stadium that was the center of life in Yabucoa is now a landmark of mangled metal. The plantain fields that generated millions in revenue have been flattened.

Puerto Rico is bankrupt. A decade-long recession pushed the island to the brink of catastrophe, and Maria pushed it over. The outdated power infrastructure, run by a public utility with $9 billion in debt, collapsed. The territory has no money to restore electricity to businesses that power the economy, and with each passing day, the economy gets worse.

Puerto Rico’s public debt

In billions

$72.2

$24.2B

2015

2000

Note: 2016 estimate

Puerto Rico’s public debt

In billions

$72.2

$24.2B

2015

2000

Note: 2016 estimate

There are only two grocers in town stocked well enough to feed the city of 38,000. The line for the post office is dozens of people long. And the most reliable meals come from crowded fast-food restaurants and street vendors.

Several businesses are shuttered or open for a few hours a day, so pay has been cut for lots of workers, and many wonder how long they can hang on.

Loading
Loading

“The baseball park is part of our heritage as Yabucoans,” said Mayor Rafael Surillo. “This sports venue is where the whole town gathers together. That place has a lot of history and in an instant, in less than 12 hours, it disappeared. That’s the kind of pain we feel.”

Reconstruction of the scene

“The baseball park is part of our heritage as Yabucoans,” said Mayor Rafael Surillo. “This sports venue is where the whole town gathers together. That place has a lot of history and in an instant, in less than 12 hours, it disappeared. That’s the kind of pain we feel.”

subhead-decoration
subhead-decoration

Maria Rivera and her husband, Roberto, have sold fried snacks, including their popular alcapurrias, for decades at a food stand on Yabucoa’s main strip. Seven days a week, eight hours a day, they work, and that has propelled them into the middle class. Keeping it going without power is a new challenge.

Loading

Maria Rivera and her husband, Roberto, have sold fried snacks, including their popular alcapurrias, for decades at a food stand on Yabucoa’s main strip. Seven days a week, eight hours a day, they work, and that has propelled them into the middle class. Keeping it going without power is a new challenge.

Loading

Tap for volume

Show transcript

MARIA RIVERABusiness owner

Look, when people come to Puerto Rico because a family member died,

their first visit is to get alcapurrias and then they go see their family.

That’s just how it is.

But right now, I work for diesel and for what we are going to eat.

And with the chaos we had, we were all so exhausted,

we didn’t know if we were going to be able stand on our feet.

Sometimes you go to bed and you can’t sleep. You can’t sleep because of all the day’s work.00:36.230--> 00:40.200And the other day, my pressure rose to 200, something that’s never happened to me.

Loading
Loading

The couple goes to town searching for the ingredients, paying nearly double what it cost before the storm. Add the fuel expenses for the generator that runs the commercial freezer, and the business is barely breaking even. But Maria and Roberto refuse to raise their prices.

Alcapurrias are traditional fritters made of grated root vegetable and green bananas. They are filled with seasoned meat and deep-fried to give them their crunchy exterior.

Loading

Tap for volume

Show transcript

MARIA RIVERABusiness owner

I told my husband, “Let’s work until our supplies finish”.

We went to work and people kept coming.

I’ve had my clients for 30 years.

And they’re not only my clients, they’re family.

They joke with us. We joke with them.

Many people say we are there to take away their stress.

I am buying small amounts of food so that I don’t have a lot when the generator stops working

because all of them are failing.

Everyone that I know their generator has stopped working.

Sometimes I tell my husband that one of these days we’ll leave and won’t come back.

Loading
subhead-decoration
Loading

More than 472,000 homes across Puerto Rico were damaged by Hurricane Maria. Elizabeth Ortiz built this house a decade ago, hoping to one day pass it along to her children. But the tempest had other plans.

Reconstruction of the scene
Loading
Loading
subhead-decoration

Puerto Rico’s emerging adults may be the most traumatized by what Maria wrecked.

For the half-million young people between the ages of 18 and 24, the powerful Category 4 hurricane was their first.

They are too young to have faced down disaster and developed the skills to survive it. And they are too old to find novelty in their reshaped landscape.

Their dreams were put abruptly on hold, and being powerless to affect what comes next, many say, is sofocante and desesperante — suffocating and exasperating.

Before Maria, 16-year-old Alondra Quiles had a plan. She would graduate high school, follow her brother to the mainland United States and join the military. After Maria, who can say? All she knows for certain is that she wants to stay by her mother’s side.

It took her weeks to summon the strength to return to the damaged home where she rode out the storm’s 18-hour assault, locked in the bathroom. That kind of desperation gnaws at her soul.

Her mother, Elizabeth, vows to persevere for Puerto Rico’s sake. Alondra is less certain it’s her fight.

Loading

Tap for volume

Show transcript

ELIZABETH ORTIZYabucoa resident

We are living as if it were the times of our parents or our grandparents.

To not have electricity means not having a fan, no water heater.

Basically the world changed. Everything changed.

The technological advances went back like 35 years or more.

Loading

Tap for volume

Show transcript

ALONDRA QUILES ORITZStudent

The day of the hurricane, in the middle of the bathroom I kept questioning God:

“Why did you send us this?

Why did you allow for us to lose everything?”

I questioned many things.

I told him I wanted to finish my senior year.

I said, “Lord, let them open the school.

Open the school because I cannot stand being cooped up in here, in this loneliness.”

Loading
Loading

The storm blew out the front doors and windows, destroying everything inside their home. It broke Alondra’s heart. Elizabeth salvaged what she could, but their home is not much more than a shell. They live by lantern light, washing clothes by hand, days ordered by sunlight.

Loading

Tap for volume

Show transcript

ALONDRA QUILES ORITZStudent

Emotionally, in losing everything, you compare your life now to what it was before.

All of that is traumatizing.

I feel immense anxiety.

It’s something that builds up inside you.

It makes you want to run and run until you get tired and scream until you release everything inside.

It has been hard because we are literally alone.

But, I do not feel so bad because I have her and I feel full.

I don’t need much more as long as I have my mother, a place to sleep and food to eat.

Her mother, Elizabeth, vows to persevere for Puerto Rico’s sake. Alondra is less certain it’s her fight.

Loading

Tap for volume

Show transcript

ELIZABETH ORTIZYabucoa resident

When will the power come back in Yabucoa? I wish it was today.

But I am not leaving my island.

Maybe rich people left, because they are not used to this.

But those of us who are poor, who have seen this before and who were hit hard.

We want to fight, to lift up our country.

We do not run.

Being powerless in Puerto Rico means that each day of the past three months is just like the day before, a way of life unimaginable in any state on the mainland. Hook up the generator, boil water and hold fast. It could take months until the power comes back on. Until then, millions are in limbo.

Being powerless in Puerto Rico means that each day of the past three months is just like the day before, a way of life unimaginable in any state on the mainland. Hook up the generator, boil water and hold fast. It could take months until the power comes back on. Until then, millions are in limbo.

subscribe
The story must be told.
Your subscription supports journalism that matters.

Credits

Reporting and videography

Arelis R. Hernández, Whitney Leaming and Zoeann Murphy

Design and development

Emily Yount and Seth Blanchard

Graphics

Armand Emamdjomeh and Lauren Tierney

Drone footage and photogrammetry

Jorge Ribas, Seth Blanchard, Kolin Pope and Hector Santos Guia

Editing

Reem Akkad, Kat Downs and Ann Gerhart

Translation

Arelis R. Hernández and Paula Duran Rehbein

Icons

Joanne Lee and Victoria Fogg

Map sources

Satellite imagery by Descartes Labs, NOAA and the Research Computing Center at the University of Chicago

Special thanks

Joa Rodríguez and Mardelis Jusino Ortiz

About our process

To give readers a new perspective on the situation on the ground in Puerto Rico, we reconstructed three scenes for this story: a mountainside overtaken by a mudslide, a devastated baseball stadium and Elizabeth Ortiz’s house, which was heavily damaged. To create these scenes, which use realistic 3-D models of places we visited in this story, we used drones to photograph all sides of each location, then used special stitching software to identify the shape of the locations, buildings and terrain. Then, algorithmically, we recreated the locations as three dimensional models. Some cleanup of the models is required, especially of features that do not render well with the technique. As a result, some trees and other debris were removed from the final reconstructions in the project.

Scroll down to continue