Puerto Rico’s Finances Add to Vulnerability in Hurricane<br />Despite the legal dispute, the board’s executive director, Natalie Jaresko, said in a statement Wednesday<br />that the board was “working closely with Governor Rosselló to coordinate support for Puerto Rico in the aftermath of the storm.”<br />“We have also reached out to the federal government to activate Title V of Promesa, which allows the board<br />to work with agencies to accelerate the deployment of grants and loans following a disaster,” she said.<br />In San Juan, Mr. Soto-Class said that more than 300,000 Puerto Ricans were already without electrical power by early Wednesday afternoon, even before the arrival of the hurricane,<br />and while he had a generator to provide backup power, most of the island’s 3.4 million people do not.<br />“This is not an event that is occurring in the Netherlands, where they’re ready for it<br />and they have a strong economy,” said Miguel A. Soto-Class, president of the Center for a New Economy, a research group on the island.<br />Its case is being handled in federal court under a special new law, called Promesa, because the existing bankruptcy law excludes Puerto Rico.<br />President Trump declared a state of emergency in both Puerto Rico<br />and the Virgin Islands, giving the Federal Emergency Management Agency the authority to deploy personnel and resources for relief.<br />The United States Virgin Islands has a far smaller population than Puerto Rico,<br />but on a per-capita basis its debt is much bigger, and even before the hurricane it was struggling economically.
