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After Homes Collapse in Earthquake, Puerto Ricans Ask: Are We Safe? Power Outage Affects Two-Thirds of Puerto Rico After Earthquake
(about 7 hours later)
GUÁNICA, P.R. — On what would have been Jeremy Lugo’s first day of seventh grade after moving back to Puerto Rico from Florida, his middle school collapsed. PONCE, P.R. — More than two-thirds of Puerto Rico had no electricity on Wednesday in the wake of a powerful earthquake that damaged buildings across the southern part of the island and prompted thousands of people to sleep outside in yards and parking lots.
A powerful earthquake that rattled the southwestern region of the island on Tuesday knocked much of Agripina Seda Middle School, with its gleaming cream-and-blue walls, to the ground. The magnitude 6.4 earthquake that struck before dawn on Tuesday caused serious damage to one of Puerto Rico’s major power plants, Costa Sur, which generates about 40 percent of the island’s electricity.
“I froze,” his mother, Maribel Báez, said with a shudder of the moment the temblor hit. “And he was scared.” Gov. Wanda Vázquez gave government workers the day off on Wednesday and urged everyone to stay home, to “avoid chaos.” Most traffic lights were not working.
“I guess I can’t study anymore,” 14-year-old Jeremy joked. “This is an event we have never lived through before,” the governor said. “We were not prepared for this. There is no way to prepare for this. It hit us hard, hard, hard.”
Ms. Báez and her family are now not only without a school but also among the thousands of Puerto Ricans who are living out of their cars or under tents because they are too fearful of the structures where they live. The family has been sleeping under the stars on a shared Red Cross cot. The governor said she and other senior officials traveled to the Costa Sur plant to check conditions after a series of earthquakes that have shaken the island since late December. “We were able to verify that it suffered severe damage to the infrastructure, to the point that employees were injured,” she said at a news conference Tuesday night.
Across swaths of southern Puerto Rico, families are huddled on parking lots, basketball courts and even roadsides, as an unrelenting series of aftershocks continues to rock the island. At least 45 earthquakes of 3.0 magnitude or higher were registered since early Tuesday morning, according to the Puerto Rico Seismic Network. Two-thirds of the island’s 3.2 million people remained without power. A wall fell on an employee, who was hospitalized in stable condition, she said. Officials said that the damage to the plant was so bad that it may be beyond repair. Engineers may instead decide to focus on another power plant, which has received federal funding for improvements.
For many, the biggest worry is what comes next. On an island where 70 percent of the structures were constructed before quake-resistant building codes were enacted, many fear that their children may be enrolled in unsafe schools like Jeremy’s, or that fissures in their homes could expand and lead to collapse. On Tuesday night, 97 percent of the island was in the dark. But nearly a half-million of the island’s 1.5 million customers had their power restored by Wednesday morning, the power authority said.
The Trump administration on Wednesday approved Puerto Rico’s request for a federal disaster declaration, which will release some funding for things like debris removal and financial assistance for people who lost their homes. But that did little to ease people’s fears that what remained of their homes might be unsafe. On Twitter, the agency said it was generating 542 megawatts of power by Wednesday morning. That is less than one-quarter of the amount normally needed at this time of year. Authorities worked through the night to fire up power plants around the island, but it was unclear whether they could generate enough electricity to make up for the loss of the Costa Sur plant.
“There are a lot of people who prefer to sleep outside, or anywhere that is not their own home,” Gov. Wanda Vázquez said. “This is very important for people to understand and realize what these two quakes meant to us.” José Ortiz, the chief executive of the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, said he hoped to get everyone’s power back on in the next day or so. He stressed that service would be restored gradually, in order to avoid overloading an unstable system.
Puerto Ricans were all too aware that the island’s aging buildings, particularly its schools, were vulnerable to hurricane winds and flooding. But few had seriously thought they could also be destroyed by powerful earthquakes, which had been relatively rare in recent years. Some homes that were elevated to avoid storm surge — a risk made apparent with the thousands of homes damaged or destroyed during Hurricane Maria in 2017 — collapsed when the ground moved. “We learned from the mistakes of the past,” he said. “We want to do it little by little so that those who get their service back, keep their service.”
On Tuesday, the education secretary, Eligio Hernández, was quoted saying that up to 95 percent of the island’s public schools were not built up to current earthquake building codes, despite Puerto Rico’s location on the border of two tectonic plates. Classes have been suspended indefinitely so the buildings can be inspected. Because of the power disruptions, about 250,000 customers were without running water on Wednesday, according to the island’s aqueduct and water authority.
“We are going to evaluate the totality of the agency’s infrastructure,” Mr. Hernández said at a news conference. “All of the schools were inspected after Maria by the Army Corps of Engineers, all of them, so they could operate.” Elí Díaz, the president of the agency, told WKAQ radio that the authorities were scrambling to find generators to power the water plants, but were finding that some of the equipment that had been tested before the earthquakes did not work when needed.
But he noted that schools built in the 1950s or ’60s were designed to comply with older building codes that did not include modern seismic safety standards. “This is a question of hygiene and health,” Mr. Díaz said. “People can go without water for one day, maybe two. Now is when things start getting a little harder.”
Emilio Colón Zavala, an engineer who is the immediate past president of the Puerto Rico Builders Association, said the building code that required quake resilience was enacted in 1987. About 70 percent of the island’s infrastructure, including more than 500 schools, was built before 1980, Mr. Colón said. A plan a decade ago to retrofit public schools ended after only about 100 schools were renovated, he said. The Trump administration approved Puerto Rico’s request for a federal disaster declaration for the earthquake, which will release some funding for things like debris removal and financial assistance for people who lost their houses.
Félix Rivera Arroyo, president of the Earthquake Commission of the Puerto Rico Engineers Association, said there was no law that required the more than 850 schools on the island to keep up-to-date with new code revisions. Many people fled their homes, even those that did not sustain damage, because they were afraid the earthquake would trigger a tsunami. No tsunami warnings were in effect.
“The problem is the government does not have a law that requires inspections,” Mr. Rivera said. Lines were forming outside grocery stories in some parts of the island that were hardest hit by the quakes.
After Hurricane Maria, the Federal Emergency Management Agency pressured Puerto Rico to enact even stricter building codes, which took effect two months ago. “We are always the forgotten ones — no help gets here,” said Jessica Ramos Sotero as she stood in line under a blazing sun at one of the only three bakeries in the town of Guayanilla that were open. “Please, let people know what is happening here.”
Even the 1987 building codes may not have offered full protection: A school in the town of Yauco, built just 15 years ago, was heavily damaged during Tuesday’s quakes. Customers were being allowed into the bakery five at a time, and were limited to buying no more than two pounds of bread and a small bag of ice. A nearby supermarket, where there also was a line, was limiting customers to purchases of five items each.
The continuing power failures were proving to be an equally pressing problem for an island that did not see full electrical service restored until nearly a year after Hurricane Maria. In some parts of the southwestern coastal city of Ponce, the lights were back on.
About 1 million electrical customers still had no power on Wednesday, and the outages also left about 250,000 customers without running water. Xiomara Cedeño, 34, said the electricity at her house went out for about a day after the first of the strong tremors, which came late on Dec. 28. A number of lesser aftershocks continued to shake the island after that, followed by stronger ones on Monday and Tuesday.
“This is a question of hygiene and health,” Elí Díaz, the president of the water department, told WKAQ radio. “People can go without water for one day, maybe two. Now is when things start getting a little harder.” Monday’s quake, which registered 5.8 magnitude, destroyed a beloved rock formation known as the Punta Ventana in Guayanilla. One death was attributed to that quake.
On Twitter, the power authority said it was generating 955 megawatts of power by Wednesday evening, about 40 percent of the amount normally needed at this time of year. The ground continued to shake on Wednesday, with at least 10 recorded tremors of 2.5 magnitude or greater, according to the United States Geological Survey.
Authorities were working around the clock to fire up power plants around the island, but it was unclear whether they could generate enough electricity to make up for the loss of the island’s major power plant, known as Costa Sur. Ms. Cedeño spent the night Tuesday in an S.U.V. with her two children and mother-in-law, but was pleased to return to her in-laws’ house Wednesday morning and find the power back on.
Towns in the southwest hit hardest by the earthquakes were struggling with all the problems combined: collapsed buildings, no power, no water and long lines at the few stores that were open. “When María happened, we were without electricity for three months,” Ms. Cedeño said, referring to Hurricane Maria, which devastated the island in 2017. “This time it went out after the second shake, during the night, and we were only without electricity for about a day and a half. It feels great. This time it came really, really fast.”
In Guánica, a coastal town that experienced much of the quake’s destruction, the school Jeremy Lugo would have attended, Agripina Seda Middle School, suffered a catastrophic failure when its second and third stories pancaked onto the first story. Angel Figueroa Jaramillo, president of the electrical workers’ union, warned that the service restoration was not going to be quick for everyone.
Rubén Díaz León, the town’s emergency manager, said another middle school and an elementary school were also probably unusable, as a result of serious internal cracking. “The recovery process is going to be slow, but we have to go slow because we have to do this safely,” he told WAPA TV. “Anything that makes us hurry, causes a mistake, could collapse the system.”
Government inspectors were scheduled to visit on Thursday, but he already had his own assessment: “No, no, no, no, no.” Those who have their electricity back need to conserve energy to help the restoration process, he said.
Inside the town’s emergency management center, a chart scribbled onto a whiteboard listed all the damaged properties and infrastructure, including 28 homes destroyed and 121 damaged, along with the damaged schools. “If you have several air conditioning units, turn on one, turn on two, don’t turn them all on,” he said. “Put them on a pleasant temperature, not so we freeze.”
Students from José Rodríguez de Soto Middle School might be able to move into an older, shuttered building, officials said, but no one knew what would happen to the students from Agripina Seda or María L. McDougall Elementary School, where the building’s main column appeared to have cracked. Edmy Ayala reported from Ponce and Guayanilla and Frances Robles from Miami. Patricia Mazzei contributed reporting from Ponce.
Carlos Del Valle, a municipal employee who also toured the schools, said he saw cracked columns and a collapsed mezzanine in one of the buildings.
“Thank God classes had not resumed,” he said.
Meanwhile, Guánica residents were looking out for themselves. Stephanie Quiñones, 24, and her sister Amira, 11, got to work when a portable water truck arrived at the Mariano “Tito” Rodríguez sports complex. Nearly 300 residents of Guánica had spent the night on cots and under makeshift tents in the complex’s parking lot, and the indoor bathrooms were in rotten shape.
Ms. Quiñones filled a plastic bucket with water and, with her sister’s help, hauled it into the building to flush the toilets. They were so clogged that the water was only enough to flush one — which meant several trips to the truck.
“It’s trembling — be careful,” Ms. Quiñones told her sister during one of the trips as she felt the earth lightly sway.
“You hear it first,” Ms. Quiñones said, as they stood amid boxes of bottled water, looking exhausted.
“It’s like a small explosion,” said her husband, Carlos Del Valle, 28.
Lines were forming outside grocery stores in some parts of the island that were hardest hit by the quakes.
“We are always the forgotten ones — no help gets here,” said Jessica Ramos Sotero as she stood in line under a blazing sun at one of the three bakeries in the town of Guayanilla that were open. “Please, let people know what is happening here.”
Jeremy and his mother planned to spend another night outdoors, even though Mr. Díaz, the emergency manager, insisted the public housing complex where they live is safe.
“Everything in the apartment is destroyed,” Ms. Báez said.
Her son noted that a church in another town, Guayanilla, was also demolished.
“Not even the priest is safe,” Jeremy said.
Patricia Mazzei reported from Guánica, P.R., Edmy Ayala from Guayanilla, P.R., and Frances Robles from Miami. Alejandra Rosa contributed reporting from San Juan, P.R. Kitty Bennett contributed research.