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JUDY WOODRUFF: Now to the
aftermath of Hurricane
Fiona and its lasting
impact on Puerto Rico.

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More than a week after
the storm hit, the island
is -- island's electric

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utility says more than
two-thirds of its customers'
power has now been restored.

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But, as Laura
Barron-Lopez reports,

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for the hundreds of
thousands still in the dark,
patience is wearing thin.

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LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: The hum
of generators and the remains
of people's lives stacked

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outside their homes filled the
streets of Yauco in Southwest
Puerto Rico on Monday,

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eight days after Hurricane
Fiona made landfall.

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MILAGROS MERCADO, Puerto
Rico Resident (through
translator): We have
spent a week without water

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or power. The authorities
haven't done anything
for us. We are in rough
shape. We lost everything.

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LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: That
sense of desperation
was also evident in

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the long lines at gas stations
across the island. People
continued to fill up cans to

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fuel generators powering
their lights, water pumps,
refrigerators, and more.

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CESAR MALDONADO, Puerto
Rico Resident (through
translator): My generator

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and my fridge are broken.
Many things broke down.

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I had to throw away over
100 pesos in food yesterday.
That is really awful.

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LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: And there's
growing anger with the island's
power operator, LUMA Energy,

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for moving slowly to
restore power to the
hundreds of thousands of
people still in the dark.

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RAMON PACHECO, Puerto Rico
Resident (through translator):

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You know how this goes. There
is no money. And what happens
to us? What happens with

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LUMA? What happens with the
governor? They do nothing.
We are abandoned here.

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We don't even have water.
They don't send water to
our neighborhoods, nothing.

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LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Fiona hit
five years after Hurricane
Maria, a Category 5 storm

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with winds over 100 miles per
hour, killing thousands. Fiona
was just a Category 1 storm,

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but its flooding has devastated
the island, washing away
bridges, ruining homes and cars,

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and initially leaving more
than a million Americans
without electricity.

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In Caguas in
Central Puerto Rico,

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Maria Nieves Martinez showed
us around her house as she
cleaned up what was left.

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MARIA NIEVES MARTINEZ,
Puerto Rico Resident
(through translator):

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Everything got ruined. I
don't have the boxes to
throw them away because

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everything got ruined. All of
this is garbage. Even this new
air conditioner we bought that

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we were going to install
got damaged. Everything
got wet. This was too much.

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LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Because
of the continued blackouts,

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Martinez says her groceries
have gone bad multiple times.

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And the power failures are
hurting the island's most
vulnerable residents too.

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JORGE RIVERA, Puerto Rico
Resident (through translator):
Right now, on the eighth day,

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we still have hospitals without
light, without electricity.
They're running on a generator.

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LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Jorge
Rivera is a doctoral
candidate in public health at

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the University of Puerto
Rico. The island's
health care had already

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been weakened by Hurricanes Irma
and Maria, recent earthquakes
and the COVID pandemic.

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And now, Rivera says,
many hospitals are
relying on generators.

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JORGE RIVERA (through
translator): In Puerto
Rico, there are more
than 60 hospital centers

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where thousands of lives
depend on or are connected
to a ventilator or depend

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on medication that will get
ruined due to the lack of
electricity or another service.

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For example, the dialysis
centers. People who depend on
the dialysis process depend

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entirely on electricity.
If there is no electricity,
that person can die.

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LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: For decades,
Puerto Rico's power grid was
run by state-controlled PREPA,

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whose infrastructure was
badly damaged by Maria.
Then, in June of last
year, a private consortium

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of American and Canadian
companies called LUMA took over
operations and maintenance.

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ISRAEL MELENDEZ AYALA,
Historian: Nothing has improved.
And we are paying a very

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expensive service. We are
one of the most expensive
services in the United States.

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LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ:
Israel Melendez Ayala is a
historian and anthropologist

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in San Juan. Before Fiona even
hit, he says that, under LUMA,

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his electric bill nearly
tripled this year and
blackouts were frequent.

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He blames decades of corruption
and negligence, including with
PREPA, for the problems today.

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ISRAEL MELENDEZ AYALA: When the
government give the contract
to LUMA, it was to improve

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the electricity services
and to upgrade it too.

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I mean, the electricity
infrastructure of Puerto Rico is

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so very old. I mean, when
the Corps of Engineers
came over here after Maria,

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they found that they were
equipment of the 1940s.
This is the level of how old

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and the negligence from the
government on the electric
infrastructure in Puerto Rico.

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LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Since
Maria, the federal government
has allocated nearly

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$13 billion for rebuilding the
grid and public utilities. But,

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so far, less than half
of that has been spent
by LUMA and PREPA.

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LUMA says it expects 91
percent of customers to
have power by Friday, if
there's enough capacity.

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Still, many in Puerto
Rico expect a long road
to recovery and to a more
dependable power grid.

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For the "PBS NewsHour,"
I'm Laura Barron-Lopez.