Puerto Ricans hear echoes of Hurricane Maria after being without power for a week following Fiona

• “I’d say it doesn’t even reach 5% that is back,” Hevel Vélez Luciano says.
• About half of the nearly 1.5 million power customers are still without electricity.
• Most of the customers who’ve been reconnected to the power grid are in the northeast.

Hevel Vélez Luciano, 25, took a deep breath as he drove through the pitch black winding roads of a mountain town on Saturday night. Beyond the mountain, there was a small cluster of lights in the distance, the only place with electricity in Cabo Rojo.

The rest was a vast darkness beyond that small area, which included a few streets in the city centre and a main traffic light.

“I’d say it doesn’t even reach 5% that is back,” Vélez Luciano, a tall man with blond streaks in his brown hair and a blue T-shirt with a silver chain, said in Spanish.

For Puerto Ricans, the uncertainty of when power will be fully restored is a haunting echo of the disastrous situation that followed Hurricane Maria five years ago, when some areas took months, if not a year, to regain power.

On Sunday, nearly half of the nearly 1.5 million power customers were still without power, a week after Fiona made landfall near Cabo Rojo, leaving the entire island in the dark.

The majority of customers reconnected to the power grid are in the northeast, where the storm caused less damage. According to the Puerto Rican government’s emergency portal, about 802,000 power customers, or about 55% of all customers, had their power restored as of early Sunday.

According to the Water and Sewer Authority, approximately 80%, or 1,062,192 customers, had their water service restored as of Saturday afternoon. Approximately 20% of customers are still without water.

“It’s a disgrace that we still don’t have full access to water a week after this storm, which was strong and caused damage but was not Hurricane Maria,” Vélez Luciano said. In Cabo Rojo, approximately 20% to 25% of customers still do not have access to water. “It’s unprofessional.”

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