Hurricane Fiona Update

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Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. As you certainly know by now, Hurricane Fiona at the Island of Puerto Rico this weekend causing catastrophic flooding and island-wide power outage, and while power has been restored for some, millions of Puerto Ricans are still currently without electricity or clean drinking water. I think the drinking water aspect of this doesn't get enough coverage. As a cruel irony, today marks five years since Hurricane Maria made landfall on Puerto Rico with the devastation that that one caused. We're going to talk about Hurricane Fiona and lessons learned or not learned from Maria.

We're also going to invite you, any listeners with connections to people on Puerto Rico right now, to call in and help us report the story because communications have been limited. Maybe you know things that haven't been reported yet that need to be told, give you the phone number in a minute. Joining us for this is Yarimar Bonilla, director of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies and professor of Africana & Puerto Rican/Latino Studies at Hunter College. Dr. Bonilla, thank you for coming on for this. Welcome back to WNYC.

Yarimar Bonilla: Thank you, Brian. Always happy to be on with you.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, please do help us report this story if you can. If you've been in touch with relatives in Puerto Rico or the Dominican Republic for that matter where it also made landfall or French Guadalupe, Turks and Caicos, anywhere down there affected by Fiona, give us a call and tell us how they're doing, 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692 or tweet @BrianLehrer.

We will also tell all of you how you can help. I know many of you stepped up after Maria and our coverage of that and donated money, donated things. I remember they were asking not just for money, but actual, certain kinds of things to be flown down there. We'll ask Dr. Bonilla, among many other things, if that thing is needed now, 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, or tweet @BrianLehrer. Dr. Bonilla, I'll start just generally asking you what you are hearing, who you've been in touch with.

Yarimar Bonilla: Obviously, the first people I call my family, and they're without power without water, but they say they're okay, they're not hurt and they're safe.

Brian Lehrer: Good. I'm glad to hear at least that. What's the water aspect of this story?

Yarimar Bonilla: Well, I think this has taken some people by surprise, but there's been as much outage of water as there has been of power. We're still not entirely sure, we're still learning why that is but a lot of people were not entirely prepared for the water aspect. My own family, they're filtering rainwater now to do the dishes, et cetera, because they did not prepare for days on end without water. We'll see how that situation developed.

Brian Lehrer: It took 18 months for power to be fully restored to Puerto Rico, following Hurricane Maria, at least that's the stat that I've seen. The lack of power during that time is set to have contributed to, or directly caused many of the roughly 3000 deaths from that disaster. I'm not hearing about a death toll, except for one or two people. Of course, every life lost is tragic. Can we say Hurricane Fiona is at least not as bad as Maria from that standpoint?

Yarimar Bonilla: It's really too soon to tell because, with Maria, the majority of lives were not lost to the wind and the rain, they were lost in the days following to lack of life-saving technologies, Leptospirosis, bacterial infections, problems in the hospitals, problems with people not being able to reach hospitals because of blocked roads and down bridges, et cetera. Of course, we all hope and are optimistic that Fiona will not be as catastrophic as Maria, but it really is too soon to make those direct comparisons.

Brian Lehrer: Maria was a category five hurricane, this is a category one, but of course, that still means it's a Hurricane. One of the stories that got reported was about a bridge that was put up after Maria, but it was temporary construction. Now that bridge has been wiped out by Fiona. I think you're familiar with that case, right?

Yarimar Bonilla: Yes. I feel like that bridge has become a symbol of so many things related to Fiona. Partly, it shows that what has really done a lot of damage this time is the water. The rainfall was just more than the Hurricane winds, what is used mostly to measure the category of a Hurricane. Fiona was just really wet. It just really poured so much water on a lot of areas that had already been receiving a lot of rainfall.

Almost all the rivers in Puerto Rico spilled out beyond their borders and then you have the symbol of this bridge that had been repaired after Maria, but it was a temporary bridge that then had become quasi-permanent, but that he couldn't even withstand a category one. It shows some of the complications with the recovery after Hurricane Maria, where we have not had the investments in infrastructure that we really needed to be ready for another storm five years later.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take a phone call. Chris in Hell's Kitchen. You're on WNYC. Hi, Chris.

Chris: Hi, Brian. Thank you for having me. Chris LeBron, L-E-B-R-O-N. I just spoke with my mom's youngest brother. He lives in Catalina at 7:00 PM last night, and they had intermittent power, but, no clean running water yet. My family in [unintelligible 00:06:26] and [unintelligible 00:06:27] in the South, we still actually haven't heard anything from them yet. This is incredibly reminiscent to Maria. My father was actually in East [unintelligible 00:06:37] in the tourist strip during Maria and wasn't able to get off the island for 23, 24 days. We're all incredibly worried about whether or not the United States is going to respond accordingly to the storm right now.

Brian Lehrer: Let me ask you a couple of follow-ups, Chris, one about the lack of clean drinking water that you described for part of your family. What do they do? We can't go without drinking water for very long. What are they doing?

Chris: For potable water, families, traditionally, if you have a preparedness kit, and most families do, you'll try to have about 10 to 14 days of portable water through bottles. One of the biggest assets in preparation of a storm like it is in the Gulf coast in Florida is ensuring that you have portable drinking water for bathing, washing, and other necessities.

Until that point, it just becomes a high commodity situation where individuals on the island are preparing themselves to drive and be stuck in traffic for hours on end, to purchase cases of water to continue moving on. In some areas, like in the South right now, where roads are cut off, you're relying on what you have currently, possibly rain storage water, and using whatever filtration systems you have there. Then, hopefully, getting some form of air drops from national guards for Homeland security.

Brian Lehrer: Thanks for those specifics. That's actually my other follow-up question for you. You said you hope the United States government does what needs to be done. What do you think that involves?

Chris: As of right now, I think the UN general security council is secondary or ancillary to the needs of our fellow Americans in Puerto Rico. I'm hoping that the Biden administration will be working hand in hand with the Latino congressional caucus and senators to actually mobilize what's needed, much what we saw in Sandy in 2012. I think any hurricane that hits the islands of Puerto Rico, The Bahamas, or the US Virgin Islands, as of right now, needs to be taken as a national security issue and it should be a top priority.

Brian Lehrer: Chris, thank you so much for calling in. We really appreciate it. Who else with people in Puerto Rico wants to report what you're hearing from them after Fiona, 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692 or tweet @BrianLehrer with Dr. Yarimar Bonilla from Hunter College. Dr. Bonilla, that was quite a call. Anything you want to reflect on there? I definitely want to get your take on what you think the appropriate response is from Washington.

Yarimar Bonilla: Yes. I think that's going to be what everyone's going to be focused on in the coming days. We know everything that didn't work after Maria in Puerto Rico, the delay, the slowed-down aid, and all the red tape and bureaucratic hurdles that people had to go through not even to get assistance, but just to even get their applications to FEMA submitted. I wonder if there are any lessons that can be learned from the pandemic, for example, where so many people just got cash payments directly to them.

We know that there are people living in areas that have completely flooded. We know that entire communities are going to have to rebuild, and also sustain themselves in the coming days without running water because it's not just about not having potable water, it's about not having running water at all. I think there has to be quick mechanisms for getting assistance to people in Puerto Rico rather than the resources that are often invested into by FEMA to vet applications and to police applications as well, and this over-concern with processing rather than really assisting people on the ground.

Brian Lehrer: I heard you on Morning Edition today because I guess their producers had the same good impulse that my producers had, which is to call you to talk about this. You said several times after Maria, the relief funds from FEMA were over-policed. You used that term a couple of times. You want to go into it in a little more detail here? What did you mean by over-policed?

Yarimar Bonilla: Well, there was a level of vetting and of scrutiny on applications and that was not proportionate to what happens in the rest of the United States and the amount of people, a percentage of people who received really the full amount from FEMA was minuscule in the single digit percentages. Overall, only about 40% of people who applied for assistance from FEMA ever received assistance at all.

A lot of the effort was placed on helping people evacuate which became a form of displacement to the United States rather than in really helping people rebuild where they are. Puerto Ricans want to rebuild. They want to stay home. We have everyone, even our biggest global artists, they have Bad Bunny singing about our desire to just stay in Puerto Rico. That is the support that we want to rebuild and to stay and not just to rebuild, but to build a new, to build a more resilient Puerto Rico that can deal with climate change, that can deal with oncoming storms. That isn't just about individual resilience, but about the resilience of our infrastructure.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take another call with some things to report. Karina in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hello, Karina.

Karina: Hello and hello to Yarimar Bonilla, who is a good friend.

[crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: If you could get together afterwards for lunch, but go ahead, Karina.

Karina: I live in Puerto Rico, and I've been hearing from my family that they don't have any clean running water right now. Same from my close friends. They don't have electricity or running water. My partner and I have a house in the west side of the island, and that part, we haven't been able to communicate with our neighbors to even see if our house is okay. The little that we have heard is that the roads are completely blocked by debris and by trees and that they have barely any cell phone communications and that the rivers have risen. There's a lot of flooding in the area. This is the town of Las Marias in Puerto Rico and the Western part of Puerto Rico.

Brian Lehrer: What do they need?

Karina: I think people need to donate. They've been asking to donate money directly to organizations that are doing mutual aid. In the case of our area in Las Marias is the central Bucarabones oneiros Cambu. They're doing direct mutual aid. That's what people are saying to not donate water bottles or clothing or things like that, but really, to donate cash so that organizations on the ground can respond because the supplies are on the ground as opposed to when Maria happened, where we couldn't get access to supplies immediately.

Brian Lehrer: Karina, thank you very much for filling us in and for also talking a little bit about what people can do. Dr. Bonilla, do you want to pick up on that? A lot of listeners did help after Maria and might want to help again. What are the best avenues for that?

Yarimar Bonilla: Again, I think Karina was saying it's the organization that are already in place and that have already been experienced in dealing with Maria. There's a general fund called Maria Fund, F-U-N-D. People can Google that and either donate it to them or see a large list of organizations that they support that do different work in different areas of Puerto Rico. That might be a source for listeners. I asked my mom the same question, what do you need in a moment when she doesn't have electricity or running water?

She gave me a one-word answer, which was hope. I think that people are just very frustrated about lack of change or lack of progress, and transformation in emergency management in Puerto Rico. There needs to be a change in how these bureaucratic procedures are put into place, but also, in how Puerto Rico is treated and addressed. There are bills before Congress right now having to do with Puerto Rico's status and with the Fiscal Control Board in Puerto Rico, which I should say did not allow the government to take income tax off of hurricane supplies.

All this resilience is being demanded of individuals at the same time that austerity is being imposed on them. It's really impoverished individuals that are having to buy all these supplies and also assist their neighbors in this time of help. Puerto Ricans need financial support to their community organizations, but they also need pressure on Washington for larger-scale change.

Brian Lehrer: Question from a listener via Twitter, "I know the electric grid was privatized," the person writes, "Was the water system also privatized since we're talking about water shortages there now?"

Yarimar Bonilla: The water system has not as of yet been privatized although there are a couple of different community water systems that are connected to the National Water System. It's not been privatized and it also needs significant amount of maintenance and repair. Every year gallons and gallons of water are lost due to bad infrastructure. The lessons that we've learned from the privatization of the grid would give us pause in moving to privatize the water system.

Because researchers have found that the lack of transparency of the private corporation that has come in, they're cutting down off their staff, has really impacted their ability to operate the grid even though they've continued to raise energy cost so that Puerto Ricans now pay the highest energy cost in anywhere in the United States, even though they experienced the largest number of blackouts.

Brian Lehrer: Really? The highest electricity rates or the highest power rates anywhere in the United States? Can you flush that out a little further?

Yarimar Bonilla: Well, we have the highest rate of energy burden, which means that Puerto Ricans spend the largest proportion of their income on electricity than anywhere else. The average rate across the United States is 2% of your income. Puerto Ricans spent 8% of their income on electricity.

Brian Lehrer: My guest, if you're just joining us is Yarimar Bonilla, director of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies and professor of Africana & Puerto Rican/Latino Studies at Hunter College. As we talk about the short-term impact and long-term context of Hurricane Fiona, who else has a question or a story to tell? If you've been in contact with loved ones down there, 212-433-WNYC. 212-433-9692, or tweet @BrianLehrer. Win in Babylon on the Island, you're on WNYC, on Long Island, I should say, we're talking about another island in this segment. Hi, Win. You're on the air.

Win: Hey, Brian. You were asking about the genesis of the water problem. It's a power problem because if there's no electricity, the filtration plants can't run. There's one [unintelligible 00:19:04] family on the west side, and [unintelligible 00:19:07], there's the Montana Filtration Plant doesn't have any power, so they can't pump water or can't get from the reservoirs to filtration plants unless they have pumps. This is all really a power problem. They're intertwined.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you very much. Dr. Bonilla, can you talk about the Island's electrical infrastructure and the politics surrounding LUMA Energy that other listener via Twitter talked about privatization of the electrical system? That's the private American Canadian company if I'm not mistaken, LUMA Energy in charge of managing the electric grid?

Yarimar Bonilla: Yes. A company that was created to take over Puerto Rico's electric company, had no track record or history of operating electrical grids. Part of the problem was that the fiscal control board imposed the privatization of the grid in order to receive the FEMA funds that we were entitled to to repair our grid. Advocates and activists in Puerto Rico have been calling for those FEMA funds to be used to transform the electric grid, to create a more sustainable backup system to invest in rooftop solar, energy grids that could be combined with the electric system because not everyone in Puerto Rico can go solar, people in high rises, people who rent.

There's a lot of people who right now can't be on solar power and so it needs to be really a societal-wide solution rather than demanding that individual folks, take out loans and go into greater debt to be able to have those resilient solar systems. What activists have been calling for an investment in clean energy, in renewable energy sources and Puerto Rico had passed a law saying, that should be moving towards renewable energy by 2025 but it still has not made that move.

The grid has not been invested in and repaired to the extent that we need. Instead, this contract was given to a private company and the contract has been described as Leon Nine which is a legal term, that means it only benefits one party and so advocates are saying that, there's grounds not just for the cancellation of the contract but actually it's annulment because, if the contract is canceled, Puerto Rico would have to pay indemnity to this electric company. Folks are saying that, we don't even need to cancel, we can completely annul it because the terms are illegal and onerous, which is an argument that has also been made about our debt, that is also onerous and should be audited. Instead, people have just moved to restructuring it at the expense of Puerto Rican taxpayers

Brian Lehrer: Julia in Manhattan you're on WNYC. Hi, Julia.

Julia: Hi. I just wanted to comment on the differences between Maria and Fiona this time around. My mother's 73 and she lives on the Island of Vieques. Prior to Maria, there was a truck that went around and let them know in Spanish that a hurricane was coming. My mother doesn't speak Spanish, but with the windows open that night, a week later called me from a FEMA phone.

This time around she knew it was coming, they were broadcasting all over the island and they very quickly fixed the cell phone towers which leads me to believe that the aid piece and the call to action to get aid from mainland in the United States is a super big motivation for the emphasis for them letting people know, but the infrastructure is still, to the speaker's point, very, very lacking. Right away electricity goes out, power goes out and Vieques has very poor infrastructure and is a tourist-focused island and it has very much critically hurt the tourist industry there. My mother said that it still hasn't bounced back post-Maria, post-COVID. Better in terms of prep but still horrific in terms of aftermath.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you very much. Thank you, Julia. I'm going to go right to another caller. Melanie in Loch Arbour New Jersey, you're on WNYC. Hi, Melanie.

Melanie: Oh, hi. We were in Puerto Rico in February 2018 because we wanted to support the island, they needed tourism. [telephone ringing in background]

Brian Lehrer: Do you need to get that?

Melanie: No. A couple of things and one was, right in San Juan, we were talking to one of the women in the hotel there and she lived outside in the Suburbs and had lost half of her roof in her house. They were still living with tarp over it because the insurance and FEMA had refused to help with a new roof because they said she only lost half of it. That set the tone, we went around the island, we were around and one of the things was, we ran into a lot of electrical workers who were there from the states down to help.

Most of them say the same thing, it was great to be helping and the people were really so thankful and except that they were saying that it was being rebuilt the same, they were just putting the same things back up. They said this is not how the electric, it shouldn't be above ground there. It shouldn't be poles, because it's just going to happen again.

Brian Lehrer: Melanie, I'm going to leave it there because we're running out of time in the segment but those are a couple of great stories you tell us. Dr. Bonilla, I think anybody who's been watching the coverage of Fiona on television, see exactly the thing Melanie was talking about at the end of her call there, all these power lines poles, we have mostly in this country too although in Manhattan as you know the power lines are buried underground and it's actually much safer when it comes to storms.

I wonder about that and the larger point she was making from talking to some of the electrical workers and so forth about things being put back the way they were, and she touched on the FEMA bureaucracy too. If her story was true about this family that was denied FEMA funding because only half their roof was destroyed.

Yarimar Bonilla: I'm sure it's true. and there's a million stories like that of surreal denials and explanations for why Puerto Ricans can't get just the basics they need of safe roofs over their head. I think there's part of this is about Puerto Rico and the unfairness with which Puerto Rican residents are treated in relation to federal assistance. Another piece is also about the federal government having to rethink its emergency procedures in the era of climate change.

We don't need to just rebuild. We need to build differently and build in preparation for the threats that are to come in the future. Puerto Rico should be at the forefront of that because we are sadly at the forefront of climate change. We are experiencing the storms back to back and we can't wait for the bureaucratic procedures of a previous era to fall into place in order for our people to have just the basics of transportation, hospitals, electricity, and running water.

Brian Lehrer: Dr. Yarimar Bonilla, director of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies and professor of Africana & Puerto Rican/Latino Studies at Hunter College. Thank you very, very much for joining us for this. We really appreciated it. I think our listeners even not connected to Puerto Rico learned a lot in addition to giving some of those who are connected to Puerto Rico a voice on the phones. Thank you very much.

Yarimar Bonilla: You're welcome. Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, you know the Podcast La Brega from WNYC and Futuro Studios, they have a project this week to collect voice memos from Puerto Rican listeners in the diaspora and on the island about how you're doing, what you're thinking about and feeling right now and what your hopes are for Puerto Rico five years after Maria and in the wake of Fiona. You can go to the La Brega Podcast.

Sorry, I'm going to give you the exact address here. It's labregapodcast.org/buzon. You have to write this down really fast. You ready? Labregapodcast.org/buzon which means mailbox by the way. That's why they take your mail there. Alana Casanova-Burgess and the rest of the team from La Brega doing that project, participate if you would like-

 

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