By Frances Robles 12 November 2017 SAN JUAN (The New York Times) – The small energy outfit from Montana that won a $300 million contract to help rebuild Puerto Rico’s tattered power grid had few employees of its own, so it did what the Puerto Rican authorities could have done: It turned to Florida for […]
By Sydney Pereira 11 November 2017Nearly two months after the Category 4 Hurricane Maria barrelled into Puerto Rico, 60 percent of Puerto Ricans still don’t have power.That number temporarily surged to 80 percent on Thursday morning, when a power line repaired by Whitefish Energy failed—wiping out power for millions of Puerto Ricans, reported BuzzFeed. Friday […]
By Karen Chávez 11 November 2017 CODRINGTON, Barbuda (The Citizen-Times) – Carl Francis is a ghost of a man, shuffling slowly, sadly down the roads of a ghost town. Francis, a father of seven, barely lived through the historic rains and winds of Hurricane Irma, which two months ago landed like a bomb on Barbuda, […]
By Fredreka Schouten 9 November 2017 St. CROIX, U.S. Virgin Islands (USA TODAY) – I first glimpse the damage to my home island from afar: A line of beaches pounded clean of sand by hurricane-driven waves. Blue tarps covering scores of roofless homes as my small commuter plane heads for a landing at the airport […]
By Ray Sanchez 11 November 2017 (CNN) – Puerto Rico’s emergency management director resigned Friday as the island’s slowly recovers nearly two months after Hurricane Maria made landfall. In announcing the resignation of Abner Gómez, effective Saturday, Gov. Ricardo Rosselló praised the work of his emergency management chief following Hurricanes Irma and Maria, which both […]
By Umair Irfan 10 November 2017 (Vox) – Millions of Puerto Ricans are again without power after a high-voltage transmission line that had been repaired by Whitefish Energy, a Montana contractor now facing an FBI investigation, failed Thursday.The Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority reported that power generation across the island plummeted from 40 percent to […]
3 November 2017 (CBS News) – Lt. Gen. Todd Semonite, the head of the Army Corps of Engineers, predicts it will be two or three months before most Puerto Ricans regain power in their homes. The vast majority of people in the U.S. territory have gone without it for over six weeks since Hurricane Maria […]
By Justin Elliott and Decca Muldowney 26 October 2017 (ProPublica) – The Federal Emergency Management Agency, citing unspecified “potentially sensitive information,” is declining to release a document it drafted several years ago that details how it would respond to a major hurricane in Puerto Rico. The plan, known as a hurricane annex, runs more than […]
By Dave Mayfield 29 October 2017 WILLIAMSBURG (The Virginian-Pilot) – Climate scientists in the federal government have been on the defensive since President Donald Trump took office in January. But military leaders will continue to address the risks that climate change poses to bases and national security, a senior Pentagon official said at conference Friday […]
By Joshua Emerson Smith 1 November 2017 (Los Angeles Times) – Officials in Imperial Beach said Wednesday that sewage flowing up the coast from Tijuana fouled miles of shoreline over the weekend, severely sickening surfers and other beachgoers.Mayor Serge Dedina, who also fell ill, said he received no advance notice from officials in Mexico about […]
