Or should this be titled Groundhog Day?
Hurricane Fiona tracked just offshore of Puerto Rico on Sunday, and wiped out virtually all power on the island and severely damaged other infrastructure. This is almost five years to the day that Hurricane Maria did her best to wipe Puerto Rico completely off the map.
There's a question and an observation here. First the question. Post Maria, the federal government pumped billions of dollars into Puerto Rico to help rebuild and harden the infrastructure. My question now is, what failed, and why? What did those billions buy? It certainly doesn't look like it bought any effective infrastructure improvements. I can understand some of the island going dark, or even a lot of the island going dark, but to have the entire island go dark should be raising red flags regarding infrastructure investment and how the money was spent. My suspicion is that, given the current political climate, those questions will remain unasked.
Now the observation. I've said this repeatedly, I don't care how good your infrastructure is, Mother Nature will have her way. Think about it - the entire island is without power. No phone, no internet, no lights, no clean water, nothing. Yesterday you were watching Game of Thrones and surfing the internet, today you're trying to figure out if your relatives in the village on the other side of the ridgeline are still alive. A total service outage can, and at some point will, happen.
Are you ready?
W8BYH out
