Dramatically expanding rooftop solar and battery storage is necessary for Puerto Rico to meet its renewable energy goals and doing so would make the territory’s grid more reliable, resilient, and affordable, a new DOE and FEMA report says. Despite the island’s obvious solar and wind energy potential, 97% of its power generation comes from fossil fuels. […]
Puerto Ricans remain without power (both electrical and in Congress) after an island-wide power outage plunged the disenfranchised colonial territory into darkness Wednesday evening. Every customer on the main island lost electricity when “all the generating units went offline,” Josue Colon, Puerto Rico’s lead telecommunications and infrastructure engineer, told reporters, and more than one-third of Puerto […]
Superhero Marisol Rios de la Luz will take on climate change, political corruption, and the myriad social injustices stemming from the two in the upcoming installment of the La Borinqueña graphic novel series, Earther reports. The Nuyorican heroine and her team, the Nitainos, will tackle the rippling impacts of climate change on the islands, covering issues such as domestic […]
Puerto Rico’s governor declared a state of emergency on Monday after a severe drought on the island left 140,000 people without access to running water, despite the necessary role that hand washing and hygiene plays in stopping the novel coronavirus, as The Independent reported. The island will start water rationing on July 2, as 26 […]
By Coral Natalie Negrón Almodóvar The Earth began to shake as Tamar Hernández drove to visit her mother in Yauco, Puerto Rico, on Dec. 28, 2019. She did not feel that first tremor — she felt only the ensuing aftershocks — but she worried because her mother had an ankle injury and could not walk. […]
By Richard Aster Multiple strong and damaging earthquakes in southern Puerto Rico starting around Dec. 28, 2019 have killed at least one person, caused many serious injuries and collapsed numerous buildings, including a multistory school in the town of Guánica that luckily was empty at the time. These quakes are the most damaging to strike […]
A powerful 6.4-magnitude earthquake struck Puerto Rico just before dawn on Tuesday after a week of heavy seismic activity. The early morning quake caused power plants to shut down to protect themselves, leaving the island in a blackout until power is restored later in the day. It also killed at least one person, injured at […]
Top officials at the Department of Housing and Urban Development confirmed to lawmakers last week that they knowingly — and illegally — stalled hurricane aid to Puerto Rico. HUD Chief Financial Officer Irv Dennis and Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Community Planning and Development David Woll said before a House Appropriations subcommittee Thursday that the […]
By Jeremy Deaton Every morning, Luz Hernandez goes to work at her hair salon on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, a neighborhood fixture without a website or a Facebook page, where a trim costs $40 and customers can get a cup of coffee while they wait. Every night, she returns to a full fridge […]