RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Puerto Rico faces the start of the new hurricane season without haviing fully recovered its energy and infrastructure sector after Hurricane Maria devastated the island in 2017.
“Hurricane season arrives, and with it, this vibration in the chest and constant concern, and more after ‘Maria’,” meteorologist Deborah Martorell said Tuesday in an interview, referring to the most powerful cyclone that has impacted the Caribbean territory.
“The difficult part is to give bad news to the citizens, especially after what we experienced with Maria. We know it is possible, but that is what we are here for, to save lives and property,” the expert emphasized.
BETWEEN 6 AND 10 HURRICANES COULD HIT PUERTO RICO THIS SEASON
According to forecasts, this hurricane season will be more active than usual, with the formation of between 6 and 10 of these cyclones could hit Puerto Rico.
Martorell agreed with experts from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the University of Colorado that “this season will definitely be more active than normal, but not like last year’s, which was the most active in history.”
With this forecast, because the island is among the first Caribbean territories that receives any tropical weather system coming out of Africa, the government should be prepared for the impact of any storm or hurricane of great intensity. “One of the great lessons of Maria is that we must all be prepared,” Martorell emphasized.
“We already know also that for an emergency, the government cannot respond for everyone. That is why all the communities moved and the diaspora, and we were able to move forward. We cannot sit back and wait, but help others,” he stressed.
ABSENCE OF EL NIÑO OR LA NIÑA
According to Martorell, the decrease in the intensity of the tropical systems this season will be because neither La Niña nor El Niño climate phenomena will be active, so the Atlantic and the Caribbean “will experience a neutral stage”.
La Niña and El Niño phenomena occur cyclically every five or six years, although lately “we have seen them more frequently”, said Martorell.
Although the hurricane season officially started on Tuesday, tropical storm Ana developed recently in the northern Atlantic. This was due, according to Martorell, to the fact that the waters in that area are warm enough for the development of these tropical systems.
“That gives rise to what we expect this season,” said the meteorologist, while mentioning that the current outlook is calm and that the tropical outlook is that no system will develop between the next five days. “No matter the forecast, we have the same risk because we are in the path of the systems, and the risk is the same,” she said.
AUTHORITIES CLAIM TO BE PREPARED FOR THE SEASON
Meanwhile, the Aqueduct and Sewer Authority (Prasa) executive president, Doriel Pagán, said Tuesday that the public corporation had taken all the necessary measures to face the new hurricane season.
He explained that the agency’s directors are reviewing everything from the most basic to the most complicated, facility by facility, inspecting the water production and distribution systems, the supply of materials to operate the structures, and equipment maintenance, among other tasks.
Other priority areas of focus are emergency generators, reservoir management, and communication. According to Pagán, at the beginning of last year’s season, they had 900 generators, but later they acquired 216 more, for a total of 1,126, and another 200 generators will be available during the peak of the season.
HURRICANE MARIA
In September 2017, Hurricane Maria delivered a destructive full-body blow to this U.S. territory, ripping off metal roofs, generating terrifying and potentially lethal flash floods, knocking out 100 percent of the island’s electrical grid, and decimating some communities.
With sustained winds of 155 mph at landfall — a strong Category 4 storm and nearly a Category 5 — Maria was so powerful that it disabled radar, weather stations, and cell towers across Puerto Rico, leaving an information vacuum in which officials could only speculate about property damage, injuries or deaths.
The entire island experienced hurricane conditions, with 20 inches or more of rain falling, often at torrential rates of up to seven inches per hour, leading to reports of raging floodwaters and people seeking help to escape them.