Since @lumaenergypr took over the transmission and distribution responsibilities from Puerto Rico electric power authority, on Monday, I’ve been monitoring the outage map this week.
•Tuesday there were 1,246 outages reported.
•As of now there are 614.
I will say: the Luma website is slow and intermittent. Sometimes it’s off-line. 30 seconds later it’s online.
There IS a problem with people not being able to report outages. I asked why is there a problem. The answer is 2 pronged: there’s an infrastructure issue that they are working to fix with the website and mobile, and second, the volume of traffic has overwhelmed the system.
Luma has confirmed that the woman in charge of overseeing all the customer service centers on the island does not speak Spanish. Some employees of LUMA who don’t speak Spanish have signed up for classes to learn how to speak the language, according to a company spokeswoman.
Last night, in San Juan, during the premiere of the documentary ‘Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided To Go For It’, the mayor, @Miguel_Romero_, gave the actress a key to the city of San Juan, & named her the adoptive daughter of the Capital of Puerto Rico.
BREAKING: @lumaenergypr, a newly founded private company, is now in charge of all transmission & distribution of electricity on the island of Puerto Rico. Luma replaces the government run Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority. The government approved is now official: at 12am ET.
THREAD: Nelly Gracia, her husband, and her son Eddie have power back on tonight thanks to the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority crew which repaired the problem and restored electricity for Nelly and her neighbors, in San Juan, around 6:20pm local time.
With the lights back on, Eddie can now go back to receiving dialysis at home, 5 hours a day, 6 days a week. As of tonight. on the island of Puerto Rico 11,618 customers are still without power, and many of them have been without it for more than a week.
PREPA tells me only 35% of the workforce showed up for work today. LUMA Energy takes over operations of PREPA at midnight on June 2nd. Many workers have refused to show up to work in protest.
THREAD: This is Nelly Gracia and her son Eddie, age 44.
They live in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Eddie undergoes dialysis 6 days a week, 5 hours a day.
He does dialysis from home.
He and his family haven’t had power for 7 days.
They were using a generator but it died today.
Nelly drove her son to a dialysis facility which still has power so he wouldn’t miss a treatment.
This is what people in Puerto Rico deal with regularly.
There are Nelly & Eddie stories across the island. Why is the power out?
There’s no good excuse.
There hasn’t been a natural disaster.
The power problems in Puerto Rico have long been human disaster: mismanagement, incompetence, greed, & laziness. All sides are to blame.
.@amandakloots’ book ‘Live Your Life: My Story of Loving and Losing Nick Cordero’ is out soon. We talked through parts of the book, her response to COVID-19 skeptics, & the prospect of falling in love again after Nicks death.
I ❤️ her. Full interview:
She talks about the calls that came in the middle of the night asking for her permission to provide a certain kind of care for Nick. She was nervous. She felt the weight of the responsibility & yet was scared of giving the wrong answer.
I asked her if the experience of going through the illness with Nick and eventually his death led to her questioning her faith; she said it actually strengthened her faith, but acknowledged moments where she’d go home and yell “where is God right now...?”
A Puerto Rico resident just text me “I haven’t had power for over 50hrs. I’m sooooooo mad & desperate.” LUMA energy takes over running Puerto Rico’s Electric Power Authority June 1st.
65% of workers didn’t not show up at work today in protest.
Thousands of ppl are without power
A recent video shows the head of the union saying "But the most important part here colleagues... this week is important... what I call crucial is when we take LUMA out... Taking LUMA out is crucial, the week is important. You know why?...”