While the federal government is helping to restore power to Puerto Rico as fast as it can, that work is being made more difficult due to the dilapidated, pre-Hurricane Maria state of the grid and because long-term, post-disaster power restoration is typically not the federal government's mission.
"We have been put in a terribly complex situation as a result of deferred maintenance and a system that was allowed to decay," Brock Long, the administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, told a House committee on Nov. 2. "The thing is, a large portion of it never worked before Maria hit."
According to the Puerto Rico government, 42% of power has been restored to the island as of Nov. 6.
州长里卡多·罗塞洛（Ricardo Rossello）最近批评联邦政府延迟恢复该岛的权力，并抱怨新闻媒体上有关岛上少数军人的人员。兵团的任务是在暴风雨登陆10天后的9月30日恢复电网。由于军团没有长期恢复的常设合同 - 本地公用事业通常在共同援助协议的帮助下自己处理该任务，因此从弗洛尔（Fluor）和其他承包商签订了将近三周的时间军团获得了其权力恢复任务。
As of Nov. 3, the Corps had four transmission crews, each with 10 linemen, and 16 distribution crews of about eight on the ground, a spokesman said. The Corps plans to have 181 crews working by the end of November, with the aid of contracts with Fluor and PowerSecure, Maj. Gen. Ed Jackson, deputy commanding general for civil and emergency operations for the Corps, told the committee.
Rep. Sean Maloney (D-N.Y.) said Rossello told him the island needs 2,000 crews to restore power—a number that Jackson couldn't comment on.
杰克逊说：“我想看看是什么推动了州长的评估，我们需要2,000。”
网格衰减
Other House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee members suggested the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA) and the island's government bore much of the blame for the slow pace of restoration, including failing to trigger mutual-aid agreements earlier, and for the overall condition of the grid.
Rep. Scott Perry, (R-Pa.) recited some of the details from a 2016 report on PREPA by energy consultants Synapse. Commissioned by the territory's utility commission, the scathing report said PREPA chronically underspent by deferring maintenance and extending outages, but it recorded $134 million in miscellaneous expenses in 2015—more than its entire budget for generation in 2017.
"PREPA's generating fleet has deteriorated rapidly over the last two fiscal years with a dramatically increased percentage of time in forced outages," according to the report. "While the underlying causes of these outages appear to be widespread, many of the outages can be linked to the deterioration of physical plants, including leaking pumps and valves, cracked ducts, [and] broken boilers, pipes, fans, and gates. The maintenance problems at PREPA's fleet have proceeded in lockstep with PREPA's declining generation and operational budgets."
Synapse said a team of engineers and auditors would be needed to fully evaluate PREPA's budget and spending.
佩里说，Prepa的管理不善是“失职”。他长时间询问正如某些人建议的那样，在“无限期地”进入岛上是联邦政府的责任。朗说不，补充说：“我认为我们不应该陷入困境。”
Contract Questions
该委员会还询问了Prepa与Whitefish Energy的3亿美元合同，以及与COBRA收购签订的2亿美元合同，以帮助恢复电力。
尽管Prepa取消了与Whitefish的合同，但与眼镜蛇的合同仍然存在。两项合同都指出，FEMA官员审查了合同，并确定他们处于“可接受的形式，有资格获得FEMA或其他美国政府机构的资金”。
Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) asked Long about the contracts. Long said they had not been reviewed by FEMA. "There's not a lawyer at FEMA that would have ever approved," he noted.
Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) also is making inquiries into the contracts. On Nov. 2, she sent letters to FEMA, the Corps and Whitefish, asking a series of questions about the contracts. Other congressional committees are promising investigations, and the FBI is looking into the contracts, according to several published news reports.
Meanwhile, Whitefish remains on the island, with the expectation that, after the company leaves the island, its 350 subcontractors will continue to work under other contractors.
The company says it has restored 30 miles of transmission line, replaced six transmission towers, repaired 58 transmission towers and almost completed work on distribution lines in a portion of San Juan.
互助
Defazio说，Rosello并没有触发共同援助协议，因为FEMA告诉他不要：指定军团恢复权力。朗说，FEMA尚未发出这样的命令。
Defazio说：“我们必须达到最底层。”
Prepa首席执行官里卡德·拉莫斯（Ricard Ramos）于10月31日正式要求纽约和佛罗里达州的互助援助，要求600名巡线员和相关设备以及管理，监督和行政支持，以帮助协调恢复工作。根据标准共同AID协议，请求公用事业通常管理物流。
On Nov. 2, New York said it would send 350 personnel and 220 vehicles, the first 70 of which were loaded onto a cargo ship and sent the weekend of Nov. 3.
另外，同样在11月3日，一艘船上有287张滚动库存，包括桶卡车，重型设备，起重机，移动住房，办公室和钢管挖掘机，到达岛上以帮助恢复电源。
The equipment was delivered as part of a $40-million contract the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers signed with Southern Co. subsidiary PowerSecure to provide 300 pieces of rolling stock and personnel to help restore the grid.
As part of another Corps contract, about 60,000 poles and 6,100 miles of transmission wire are scheduled to arrive within a week.
"We are getting this power grid up as fast as we can," Jackson told the committee. "We realize that what we are doing is nowhere going to be the ultimate in-state solution for where the grid needs to be."
