Another Massive Blackout Struck Puerto Rico Last Night

This report was originally published by Daisy Luther at The Organic Prepper

Last night, an explosion at a San Juan power plant regressed Puerto Rico’s efforts to restore power to the island five months after Hurricane Maria struck a massive blow. Much of Northern Puerto Rico has suffered another blackout, including the capital city.

The island’s Electric Power Authority said several municipalities were without power, including parts of the capital, San Juan, but they were optimistic it could be restored within a day as they worked to repair a substation that controls voltage…

…It was not immediately known what caused Sunday’s fire, which was quickly extinguished. Officials said the explosion knocked two other substations offline and caused a total loss of 400 megawatts worth of generation. (source)

And we aren’t getting the whole story about these outages. A reader named Jennifer from Manati told me:

What the news ain’t saying is that we actually had three power grids down. The first one was the Cambalache power station in Arecibo. This left the whole north area without power. Then Palo Second station went down. This second power station connects power from the north to the capital. Afterwards, we had an explosion in Monacillos. This one effected mayor hospitals, airport and capital. For some reason the government and news want people to believe that everything is well and running that things are almost back to normal when that ain’t the truth. All you have to do is visit cities outside from the metropolitan area to see the reality we are living.

And even worse, before this explosion, more than a million people were still without power from the Category 4 hurricane that struck the island on Sept. 20, 2017. They’ve been thrown back in time by a hundred years, with no power, no running water, and damaged homes.

This is a prime example of how disasters aren’t just one-time occurrences. They’re very often followed by subsequent disasters.

Think about it. Fires are often followed by floods which are followed by mudslides and sinkholes. (See California for reference.) The tsunami in Japan was followed by a nuclear plant disaster. Hurricane Harvey in Texas had storm surges and floods that caused a chemical plant to explode a few days later. Now, this already-stressed infrastructure has crumbled again under it’s increasing demand.

Power has been restored to a few critical locations.

This is one situation in which living in a more populated area can benefit you. After last night’s explosion, workers were quick to restore power to specific locations.

By late Sunday, electricity workers had been able to restore power to key locations, including the Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport in Carolina, as well as the Medical Center. (source)

As well, after Hurricane Maria, the first areas to resume some form of normalcy were the ones with higher population. San Juan saw it’s power restored immediately but people in more remote areas are still waiting. And not just a few people.

Vox estimated that 1.36 million Americans are still without electricity. You’ll see other numbers that say 400,000, but that is counting households, not individuals.

The US Army Corps of Engineers… estimated that Puerto Rico would need 50,000 utility poles and 6,500 miles of cable to restore its power system…

…When an electrical circuit is open or broken, the power doesn’t flow, whether that’s a flashlight or a phone.

It’s a simple concept, but when it happens in the electricity grid — what engineers say is the largest, most complex machine ever built — it quickly becomes a byzantine problem.

With thousands of miles of transmission lines, gigawatts of generation, computers that route power, frequency regulators, and transformers that all serve the constantly fluctuating needs of millions of people, lots of things can go wrong. Generators can shut down. Transformers can explode. Power demand and supply can fall out of balance.

By far the most common cause of blackouts is damage to power lines, which are the most vulnerable part of the electrical grid to storms.

“In a disruption like this, it’s transmission and distribution,” Marsters said. “Damage does occur to generation assets, but those are point specific and you can get those back online in a reasonable time.”

…Puerto Ricans are now desperately trying to connect the main power arteries to individual homes, and some have resorted to their own makeshift repairs, mounting their own utility poles and stringing up low-voltage transmission lines. (source)

But even before Hurricane Maria made landfall, things with the infrastructure were dire.

The power grid in Puerto Rico was in rough shape BEFORE Maria

Even before the hurricane devastated the island, the infrastructure was in terrible shape, a fact underlined by last night’s explosion.

The blast illustrated the challenges of restoring a power grid that was already crumbling before it was devastated by the Category 4 hurricane.

In many cases, power workers are repairing equipment that should have long been replaced but remained online due to the power authority’s yearslong financial crisis. PREPA is worth roughly $4 billion, carries $9 billion in debt and has long been criticized for political patronage and inefficiency. It also struggled with frequent blackouts, including an island-wide outage in September 2016.  (source)

Before Maria made landfall, I wrote an article that predicted a long haul to get power restored.

It’s entirely possible that Hurricane Maria will put the island in the dark for quite some time to come, completely changing their way of life. 70,000 people are still without power from their bout with Irma, and much more damage to the utility system is expected. Gov. Rossello said:

“We will not have sustainable electric infrastructure in the near future. We will be bringing in crews from outside of Puerto Rico to attend to these measures.” (source)

Philipe Schoene Roura, the editor of a San Juan, Puerto Rico-based newspaper, Caribbean Business, wrote:

Prepa Executive Director Ricardo Ramos Rodríguez recently said the powerlines carrying electricity in the public corporation’s system are in such a deteriorated state that a strong storm could leave the island without power for weeks.

“To give you a number, if during Hurricane Georges 100 lines went down in 1998, today the same [kind of ] hurricane would bring down 1,000,” the official candidly told Caribbean Business when asked about the possibility of Prepa’s system effectively withstanding the onslaught of a similar storm.

“The lifespan of most of Prepa’s equipment has expired. There is a risk that in light of this dismal infrastructure situation, a large atmospheric event hitting Puerto Rico could wreak havoc because we are talking about a very vulnerable and fragile system at the moment,” Ramos added…

…Francisco Guerrero (a fictitious name to protect his identity), a Prepa field worker for 23 years, said it would take months for Prepa to bring up Puerto Rico’s power system should a hurricane like Harvey strike the island.

The lack of linemen and other technical personnel, as well as a lack of equipment—including replacement utility poles for powerlines and replacement parts—are the issues of greatest concern among public corporation employees, who say they risk their lives working with equipment in poor condition that provides them with little safety.

Guerrero said that today only 580 linemen remain out of the 1,300 who were part of the workforce in previous years—and that’s not counting the upcoming retirement of another 90 linemen. Likewise, he said there are only 300 electrical line testers to serve the entire island.

The source also said that much of Prepa’s equipment dates back to the 1950s—and the more “modern” equipment that is still functional dates from the 1990s; in other words, it’s from the past century.

“If a hurricane like this one [Harvey] hits us, the system is not going to come online, I’d say, in over six months. Right now, the warehouses don’t even have materials. I’m talking about utility poles and other stuff,” Guerrero explained.

“How can you say that you have equipment that dates back to the 1950s and you are not buying parts to repair them? When it’s time for maintenance work, you don’t have the part and you leave things as they are, but there is an entry in the log saying maintenance was done. And yes, it was done, but the most important thing was not done, which was to replace that part,” he added.

Although he did not assign the debacle to former Prepa Chief Restructuring Officer Lisa Donahue’s order to stop buying supplies as the main cause for the lack of materials, he is certain the order was “the straw that broke the camel’s back.” (source)

Many people thought it was a ridiculous premise and that power would be up and running within a couple of weeks. But it turns out, that was cognitive dissonance. This situation is all the proof you need to see that things can change overnight.

Go watch this video to see what everyday life is like in Puerto Rico for nearly half a million people.

Do you think things will ever be the same in Puerto Rico?

Have the residents of the island been permanently thrown back into Third World status? Will the power ever be fully restored? And considering they’re Americans too, isn’t it rather embarrassing that we aren’t doing more to aid in the recovery?

Share your thoughts in the comments section below.

More information about the Puerto Rican crisis:

• Hurricane Maria Could Take Out Power in Puerto Rico Indefinitely and It’s Too Late to Prepare


• The SHTF in Puerto Rico Last Night


• Puerto Rico: What It’s Really Like After the SHTF


• What Life Is Like for a Million People in Puerto Rico Who STILL Don’t Have Power


• VIDEO: What Everyday Life Is Like in Puerto Rico Now

Please feel free to share any information from this article in part or in full, giving credit to the author and including a link to The Organic Prepper and the following bio.

Daisy Luther is the author of The Pantry Primer: A Prepper’s Guide To Whole Food on a Half Price Budget.  Her website, The Organic Prepper, offers information on healthy prepping, including premium nutritional choices, general wellness and non-tech solutions. You can follow Daisy on Facebook and Twitter, and you can email her at daisy@theorganicprepper.ca

A North Korean EMP Attack: The Dark Possibility

Authored by Shannara Johnson via HardAssetsAlliance.com,

As the tension between North Korea and the US continues to grow, the possibility of war is rapidly evolving into a probability. Now some military experts worry that an attack via EMP (electromagnetic pulse) on the US mainland might be a feasible option for Pyongyang.

The signs are certainly there: Having recently completed the ninth missile test of 2017, Kim Jong-un promised to send the US an even bigger “gift package.”

Adding to Kim Jong-un’s antics and inflammatory rhetoric, the recent death of American college student Otto Warmbier after his 17-month imprisonment in North Korea has certainly fanned the flames of antagonism between the US and the rogue regime.

Han Tae Song, North Korea’s ambassador to the UN in Geneva, firmly rejected the accusation of misconduct and declared North Korea operates “according to our national laws and according to international standards.”

To add insult to injury, Pyongyang’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) also denies any wrongdoing or torture of Otto Warmbier—even going as far as to say North Korea is the “biggest victim” in this situation.

EMP: Is This The Real Threat?

Most analysts believe North Korea is not yet capable of a direct missile strike on the US mainland, but Kim Jong-un’s dogged determination to make this a reality is quite disconcerting.

Some experts believe that the more realistic threat at this point in time is an EMP attack. To make that happen, all North Korea has to do is launch a low-yield nuclear missile from a submarine, ship, or even by balloon and explode it at high altitude, above the atmosphere.

The potential result: a blackout of the Eastern grid that supplies 75% of power to the United States.

If an EMP attack did take place, it would be beyond anything we have seen before. The Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse Attack, which was established by Congress in 2001, estimates that within 12 months following a nationwide blackout, “up to 90% of the US population could perish from starvation, disease, and societal breakdown.”

Electronic Armageddon

In practical terms, a catastrophic blackout would be worst in cities, because it would instantly deprive the population of access to drinking water, refrigeration, heat, air conditioning, and telecommunication. Food stores would be looted within a matter of days, and gas stations would cease to function without electricity.

Without Internet access and power, all commerce and advanced methods of communication would stop. There would be no TV, radio, phones. Credit card transactions and cash withdrawals at banks would be impossible. Paper money would become worthless, and Bitcoin would cease to exist, along with the stock market.

Newt Gingrich, speaking at the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources earlier this month, said an EMP attack “would send us back to the 18^th century.”

But that’s not the only problem. If no outside help arrives, within days, chaos begins to reign. Civilization is a rather thin veneer that humans have acquired over centuries, a mask covering our hard-wired survival instincts. Once the mask slips, it could mean the end of the world as we know it.

We Are Ill-Prepared For An EMP Attack

US politicians and major utilities have kicked the can down the road when it comes to EMP preparation. Edison Electric estimates that shielding transformers for the US grid system could cost $20 billion.

Granted, American power companies have been studying ways to protect our electronic grids against attack, but tangible results are slow in coming.

The only current option after an EMP attack would be to replace damaged or destroyed transformers. However, says Scott Aaronson, managing director for Cyber and Infrastructure Security at Edison Electric, replacements for those transformers must be procured from foreign suppliers, which could take up to 18 months.

Peter Vincent Pry, leader of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security, believes North Korea is closer to launching an EMP attack than many analysts believe. He wants Congress to work harder and cut the red tape to allow the innovation necessary to mitigate the threat.

In Pry’s opinion, an EMP attack would ultimately kill more Americans than a direct nuclear blast could. His book, The Long Sunday, describes several plausible EMP attack scenarios.

Pry thinks that “the first nation to use nuclear weapons today—even a rogue state like North Korea or Iran—will immediately become the most feared and credible nuclear power in the world, a formidable force to be reckoned with, and perhaps the dominant actor in a new world order.”

Is there a sensible way to prepare for an EMP attack?

Maybe not, but stocking some food, water, fuel, and batteries for emergencies is always a good idea—as well as owning a stash of gold coins as hard assets.

While “you can’t eat gold,” as some preppers say, it is the only kind of money that has prevailed over the millennia.

“Totally Surreal” — Massive Simultaneous Blackouts Hit NY, LA, and San Francisco

(RT) — Power outages hit Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco, leaving commuters stranded and traffic backed up Friday. About 90,000 customers were affected in San Francisco.

While the outages occurred around the same time there is no evidence they were connected or coordinated.

NEW YORK

The first outage occurred at around 7:20am in New York when the power went down at 7th Avenue and 53rd Street subway station. That sent a shockwave of delays into the rest of the subway system.

A Metropolitan Transportation Authority spokesman told AP some passengers were stranded on trains. Some cars were dark except for phone light, and some riders say their commutes took two to three hours. Stations were packed.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo called for a state investigation into the power outrage that ruined Friday’s commute for many straphangers.

“The loss of power due to a Con Edison equipment failure during the morning rush hour caused a cascading effect and impacted the lives of thousands of commuters,” Cuomo said in a statement. “Simply put, this was completely unacceptable.”

“The @MTA started the weekend early, I guess? Power outage at 53rd & everything is crazy,” one commuter wrote on Twitter.

The weekend is when the MTA does many of its major subway repairs and cuts or reduces subway service.

“It took me an hour and 20 mins to go one stop, give up, find my way out of this mob, then walk back home @MTA,” wrote Liz Baker on Twitter.

By 11:30am, MTA spokesman, Kevin Ortiz, confirmed the generators were running again at the station, and delays were cleared up by the afternoon.

The utility company, Con Edison, said one of its electric lines triggered the outage. Spokesman Allan Drury told AP it is not clear how long the repairs will take or how the failure occurred.

We’re working jointly with the @MTA to make repairs to underground equipment serving the @NYCTSubway system as quickly as possible.

— Con Edison (@ConEdison) April 21, 2017

LOS ANGELES

Later in the morning, power outages were reported in Los Angeles International Airport, as well as in several other areas around the city.

SAN FRANCISCO

In San Francisco, the power outages were widespread.

The utility company, Pacific Gas & Electric, said a series of outages began at 9 am and within 30 minutes about 90,000 customers lost power.

PG&E spokeswoman Tamar Sarkissian said crews are assessing the situation but there’s no immediate estimate for when power will be restored.

PGE officials are pointing to a substation fire as the primary cause of the outage, but have given no public estimates as to when power will be restored.

The blackout includes the Financial District, Presidio and stretch to the Marina/Cow Hollow area, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

Here is the official list of neighborhoods affected by the #poweroutage in San Francisco. pic.twitter.com/aWapzZOFPh

— KQED News (@KQEDnews) April 21, 2017

Traffic lights were out at scores of intersections, and cars backed up on downtown streets as drivers grew frustrated and honked at each other.

BART’s Montgomery Station was closed for more than two hours, with trains running through the station without stopping, before the agency reopened it.

All cable cars were down, as were several Muni bus lines that typically run on electricity from overhead wires,. Shuttles were put in place to provide service, according to the Municipal Transportation Agency.

The blackout took out traffic signals, affecting office buildings with residents and workers in the area calling it “totally surreal.”

Twenty-one schools in San Francisco were affected by the outage that affected utilities, including the internet, but they remained open and their schedules adjusted. Families were to be notified if there were changes at the schools.

The Philip Burton Federal Building and US Courthouse were closed down by the outage.

The San Francisco Fire Department said it has responded to more than 100 calls for service since a power outage struck a large area of the city. No injuries were reported.

The department tweeted that the calls included 20 elevators with people stuck inside.
The department adds there have been no delays in responding to calls.

Daisy Prado, a 23-year-old South Bay resident, told the San Francisco Chronicle she was sitting at her desk on the 14th floor of an office building in the Financial District when the power suddenly dropped out. She looked out the window and saw the buildings across the street go dark.

“They told us on an intercom to just stay calm,” Prado said. “People are hanging out the side of their buildings waiting to see what’s going to happen.”

Pacific Gas and Electric’s own outage map shows thousands affected and current estimates indicate that the outage is hitting up to 100,000 customers.

At a 2:00 pm press conference, city officials said 300 traffic signals went still down, with either flashing red or no signals, in the North East section of the San Francisco. The city employed 100 parking patrol officers to help with traffic control.

Drivers were asked to treat intersections as ‘Always Stop.’

There had been no reports of traffic collisions.

San Francisco Police Chief, Bill Scott, said “Our major issue is traffic.”

FBI Emails Are Not ‘Trending’ On Twitter, Facebook, Buzzfeed, Or Snapchat

October 30, 2016   |   admintam

(ZHE) In the 24 hours since FBI Director Comey dropped perhaps the biggest bombshell of the entire Presidential campaign, sending Democrats (and media) scrambling headless-chicken-like for answers (and blame-scaping), does anyone else find it odd that ‘FBI Emails’ does not appear to be a hot topic, trending, big deal on any social media?

Snapchat…”Hot”

Facebook… “Trending”

Twitter…”Top Moments”

Buzzfeed… “Trending Now”

As Liberty Blitzkrieg’s Mike Krieger recently asked (and answered), why are these things happening in the first place?

Apple claims not to endorse candidates, but their actions suggest otherwise, and some of their executives – including CEO Tim Cook – actively support Clinton’s campaign. Buzzfeed recently obtained an invitation to a private $50,000-per-plate fundraiser Cook is hosting for Clinton with his Apple colleague, Lisa Jackson, at the end of this month.

Apple isn’t the only corporation doing Clinton’s bidding. Wikileaks founder Julian Assange said Clinton made a deal with Google and that the tech giant is “directly engaged” in her campaign. It’s been widely reported Clinton hired Eric Schmidt—chairman of Alphabet, the parent company of Google—to set up a tech company called The Groundwork. Assange claims this was to ensure Clinton had the “engineering talent to win the election.” He also pointed out that many members of Clinton’s staff have worked for Google, and some of her former employees now work at Google.

Of course, I covered Groundwork earlier this year. See: Meet “Groundwork” – Google Chairman Eric Schmidt’s Stealth Startup Working to Make Hillary Clinton President

Twitter is another culprit. The company has gotten a lot of slack for banning conservatives and Trump supporters such as Breitbart’s Milo Yiannopoulos and, most recently, rapper Azealia Banks after she came out in support of Trump. Twitter has provided vague answers as to why conservative voices have been banned while they’ve allowed other users to call for the killing of cops.

Just yesterday, Buzzfeed revealed that the social media giant’s top executive personally protected the President from seeing critical messages last year. “In 2015, then-Twitter CEO Dick Costolo secretly ordered employees to filter out abusive and hateful replies to President Barack Obama.”

The founders of some of the most popular pro-Trump Twitter handles – including @USAforTrump2016 and @WeNeedTrump—insist Twitter is censoring their content. They’ve pointed out that Twitter changes trending hashtags associated with negative tweets about Clinton (which has been reported before). On August 4, shortly after the hashtag “HillaryAccomplishment” began trending, it was taken over by anti-Clinton users, who used it to mention Benghazi or Emailgate. Eric Spracklen, @USAforTrump2016 founder, noticed the hashtag was quickly changed—pluralized to #HillarysAccomplishments.

Many people have pointed out the exact shenanigans described above for other Clinton-related hashtags. In fact, it’s been my self-described progressive friends who have been most up in arms about it.

“They take away the hashtag that has negative tweets for Clinton and replace it with something that doesn’t so the average person doesn’t see what was really trending,” Spracklen said. “This happens every day.”

This new strand, where one cannot even search for alternative viewpoints amid technology companies who stand to benefit from the free-trade policies and eased immigration regulations of a Clinton presidence, represents a dangerous sea change. There’s absolutely no question the digital forums we use every day are censoring conservatives and favoring Clinton. You can’t simply scroll through photos on Instagram, look for a video game in the App Store or do a quick Google search without being fed anti-Trump and pro-Clinton propaganda.

Personally, I’ve definitely noticed a big-time pro-Clinton bias in my Twitter stream on a daily basis, and I don’t follow people/organizations that would define themselves as overtly pro-Clinton. That’s my honest perception, and I don’t have a dog in this fight.

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This article (FBI Emails Are Not ‘Trending’ On Twitter, Facebook, Buzzfeed, Or Snapchat) by Tyler Durden originally appeared on ZeroHedge.com and was used with permission. Tune in! Anti-Media Radio airs Monday through Friday @ 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. Help us fix our typos: edits@theantimedia.org.