CASTAÑER, Puerto Rico — Helicopters from the power company buzz across the skies of this picturesque valley, ferrying electrical poles on long wires to workers standing on steep hillsides.
The people of Castañer, an isolated village in Puerto Rico’s central mountains, watch warily. Crews have come and gone, and people living along the mountain roads don’t expect to get power until late summer, if ever. Power finally started flowing to the center of town last month, but the electrical grid remains unstable — an island-wide blackout Wednesday disrupted progress — and the hospital continues to use its own generator.
More than six months after Hurricane Maria, daily life in Castañer is nowhere close to normal. Children attend school half the day; another nearby school is closed for at least two years, and families who lost their homes have set up beds and couches in its classrooms.
[For more on this story by Sarah Varney, go to https://khn.org/news/in-a-puer...-and-health-suffers/]
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