Army Corps: Puerto Rico looks a lot like Iraq in 2003

Most of Puerto Rico’s 3.4 million residents are still in the dark, 11 days after Hurricane Maria engulfed the island.

The storm’s 150 mph winds and a 20-inch cascade of rain created a vast humanitarian crisis, with residents now scrounging for food, clean water, and fuel to keep cool in the sweltering heat.

The damage is especially stark for Puerto Rico’s energy network, which was struggling with bad finances and poor maintenance even before the hurricane swept through.

And for Col. James DeLapp, commander of the Recovery Field Office for Puerto Rico at the US Army Corps of Engineers, the scene on the ground — and the challenge ahead — looks lot like what the Army Corps faced after the 2003 US invasion of Iraq.

“We had a very similar situation following the opening of the Iraq War,” said DeLapp. “This is very reminiscent of that type of effort.”

The island’s utility monopoly, Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, is $9 billion in debt and missed an interest payment in July, as Vox’s Alexia Fernández Campbell explained.

Its power lines, transformers, and generators suffered from neglect, making it one of the most expensive and least reliable electricity grids in the United States.

And then the strongest hurricane in 89 years struck.

“PREPA, as they’ve described it, 80 percent of infrastructure is down, meaning literally on the ground,” said DeLapp.

The Department of Energy’s most recent status update reports “significant damage to transmission and distribution systems,” with about 100 percent of utility customers still without power.

US Department of Energy

“It was a catastrophic storm ... to the point that concrete transmission lines were knocked down and destroyed,” said John Rabin, acting regional administrator for FEMA’s Region II, which includes Puerto Rico, during a call Friday with reporters. “Transmission is going to have to be rebuilt throughout the entire island."

In April 2003 after the invasion, Iraq’s power generation capacity was at 1.27 gigawatts due to fuel supply disruption, infrastructure damage from US bombing, and looting. This was down from 4.3 gigawatts prior to the war, a capacity that only managed to provide Baghdad with 24 hours of electricity while sending six to eight hours of power to other parts of the country.

The Coalition Provisional Authority cited unreliable electricity as one of the factors driving discontent in Iraq, and in August 2003, CENTCOM authorized the Army Corps to form Task Force Restore Iraqi Electricity.

MARWAN NAAMANI/AFP/Getty Images

The task force mustered 84 civilians and 90 soldiers from the Army Corps and spent $1.07 billion to restore electricity production to prewar levels by installing new generators and repairing transmission lines, but attacks from insurgents stalled further progress.

Restoring electricity to Puerto Rico is already shaping up to be similarly difficult (though without the IEDs).

“The biggest and unique challenge is we’re on an island,” DeLapp said. That means every new utility pole, every yard of cable, every repair truck, and every gallon of fuel has to come by boat or by air.

This has already formed a major bottleneck for relief efforts and is driving up the price of the recovery.

The Army Corps is focusing on getting generators back online to power hospitals and sanitation facilities.

DeLapp noted that contrary to prior media reports, the Guajataca Dam in western Puerto Rico was not breached.

“Right now, just to clarify, it definitely has not failed and not collapsed,” said DeLapp, who visited the site this week. “The main embankment of the dam is all there and appears solid.”

The dam, which provides drinking water for the region, did suffer some damage to an overflow spillway, and the Army Corps is providing technical expertise to repair the structure.

Meanwhile, federal agencies including FEMA, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Department of Energy are still trying to grapple with the extent of the damage to Puerto Rico’s energy infrastructure and the scope of their responsibilities.

“That’s currently being finalized in terms of what that actually means,” DeLapp said.

Peter Lopez, who was appointed yesterday to lead EPA’s Region II, which includes Puerto Rico, said that the agency is concentrating on providing clean water and controlling waste, but Puerto Rico’s isolation, mountainous terrain, and public debt are all confounding relief efforts for one of the largest hurricanes to ever strike the island.

“They have seen tropical storms and hurricanes before, but the magnitude for this is unprecedented,” Lopez said.

He is expecting to take over for acting Regional Administrator Catherine McCabe on October 10 and said that restoring power to Puerto Rico could take months, and for some parts of the country, up to a year.

And other aspects of island life could take even longer to return to an antediluvian state.

Lopez, who served in the New York State Assembly since 2007, said he knows firsthand how long recovery can take.

“In my region we’re now six years out from [Hurricanes] Irene and Sandy,” he said. “People are still suffering.”