Maria Strikes, and Puerto Rico Goes Dark<br />Hurricane Maria, the most powerful storm to make a direct hit on Puerto Rico in almost a century, ravaged the island on Wednesday, knocking out all electricity, deluging towns with flashfloods<br />and mudslides and compounding the already considerable pain of residents here.<br />Electrical power, produced by the state-owned Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, or Prepa, has long been<br />a headache for residents, who have come to distrust the flickering grid even in normal conditions.<br />Brock Long, the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said<br />that the United States Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico had very fragile power systems and that electricity was expected to remain out for a very long time.<br />“There has been nothing like this,” said Ramón Lopez, a military veteran who was holding back<br />tears outside his neighborhood in Guaynabo, on the northern coast near San Juan, the capital.<br />Efforts by Prepa to fix lines and restore power after Irma will almost certainly have been undone by Maria,<br />and the question of how a debt-ridden commonwealth will pay for comprehensive repairs is sure to confound its leaders long after the storm dissipates.
