The rift between the National Weather Service and the Fortuño administration over the closing of schools and public services due to hurricane Earl continued to widen Tuesday, with back-and-forth comments between the two sides.
During a press conference Tuesday, Gov. Fortuño reiterated that his administrative decision to open most of the island’s 1,500 schools and public offices Monday was done in collaboration with the NWS and the expected path Earl was expected totake.
“The decision to close all schools in the eight most affected towns and leave the rest of the island system operating Monday was done in conversations with and the consent of the NWS, as all of our decisions are done in cases of weather emergencies,” the chief executive said.
Early Tuesday, Israel Matos of the NWS stated that his agency gave the administration ample time to make decisions on the timeline for Earl, suggesting that the government erred in its decision to allow classes islandwide.
Fortuño said that because the island was not on hurricane advisory, which means that hurricane conditions are imminent, until Monday at 11 a.m., the administration took the prudent action of not canceling all classes through the whole island on Sunday.
On Monday, the administration closed the schools and public services at noon as Earl was starting his run through the island. This decision, coupled with the decision of most private-sector industries to cancel their activities, caused a massive traffic jam in the metropolitan area.
The administration was also on the defensive regarding their handling of the electrical power situation. As of 6 p.m. Tuesday, 107,159, or 6.8 percent of the total (1.5 million) customers, were without power.
Contrary to common belief, it is the metropolitan area, not the northeastern region, where the most customers without power are located.
According to Puerto Rico Electrical Power Authority director, Miguel Cordero, the main problem at the agency has been downed tree lines, mostly in the Guaynabo area.
“The issue is that we have old lines running through homes and those lines are usually near or between trees. We just can’t get to them because people are not always at home during the day. This caused a branch to fall on a line, which shut down a circuit to a region,” Cordero said.
The director was confident that all the power will be restored by the early hours of today.
As for the roads, the Transportation and Public Works Department announced that 17 roads were damaged and were closed due to Earl. Of those, six were opened by midday Tuesday. The rest are in various stages of reopening.
The affected roads were Routes 494 in Isabela, 423 and 112 in Moca, 845, 181 and 25 in San Juan, 191 in Río Grande, 608 and 6115 in Ciales, 666 in Manatí, 10 and 123 in Utuado, 181 in Arecibo, 14 in Cayey and 160, 646 and 690 in Vega Baja.
Also affected was Road 975 in Ceiba which was partly destroyed due to the ground giving way at the pass of a river bed.
The Water and Sewer Authority reported that almost 60,000 of its consumers were without water as of 4 p.m. Tuesday. As with power, the San Juan metropolitan area was the most affected, with 17,427 homes and businesses without water.
José Ortíz, the WSA executive director, explained that the problem resided in the lack of power to pump the precious liquid.
http://www.prdailysun.com/index.php?page=news.article&id=1283314245
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