Puerto Rico Recovery

More than two years ago, Hurricane Maria revealed that Puerto Rico was utterly unprepared for a powerful hurricane despite its location in one of the world’s most storm-vulnerable regions.Now, a flurry of earthquakes topped by a 6.4-magnitude one that recently killed one person, injured nine others and damaged hundreds of homes, schools and busines...

More than 2,000 people in shelters. Nearly one million without power. Hundreds of thousands without water. The aftermath of a 6.4-magnitude earthquake that killed one person, injured nine others and severely damaged infrastructure in Puerto Rico’s southwest coast is deepening as the island’s government says it is overwhelmed. Many in the affected a...

Legislators tell The Associated Press that will defy the U.S. government and approve a law to keep cockfighting alive in a bid to protect a 400-year-old tradition practiced across the island despite a federal ban that goes into effect this week. The move unleashed cautious rejoicing in the island’s cockfighting industry Tuesday night despite concer...

Hector Muñoz owns a coffee farm in San Lorenzo, Puerto Rico, and hurricanes aren’t the only natural disasters he’s worried about. “If a drought comes it could be catastrophic,” he said. He has reason to be concerned. Powerful El Niños are expected over the next decade and they typically bring drought conditions. Adding to th...

Puerto Rico on Thursday unveiled details of a $20 billion plan to strengthen and modernize the U.S. territory’s shaky power grid more than two years after Hurricane Maria as islanders brace for a looming rate hike amid a recession. The 10-year plan aims to bury power lines, increase the use of natural gas and create a transmission and distrib...

When Doña Milagros Matos Marquez and her husband Don Cruz Marquez received the news that Hurricane María was approaching Trujillo Alto in Puerto Rico, they expected some rain and maybe a little bit of wind, like with previous storms. Instead María blew their roof off once the storm made landfall exactly two years ago on Friday. In the months after....

Federal authorities said Tuesday they have arrested two former officials of the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the former president of a major disaster relief contractor, accusing them of bribery and fraud in the efforts to restore electricity to Puerto Rico in the wake of Hurricane Maria. The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Puerto Rico sa...

A top Puerto Rico official said Tuesday that he appeared before a federal grand jury investigating a former government adviser in the latest corruption allegation to hit the U.S. territory this week. Chief of Staff Ricardo Llerandi said he answered questions and submitted documents related to Alberto Velázquez, who was a consultant for a company th...

It’s been almost two years since Hurricane Maria shuttered the hospital on the small Puerto Rican island of Vieques, yet the Federal Emergency Management Agency has no concrete plans to rebuild it, NBC News reported. Democrats on Wednesday demanded answers from FEMA’s acting administrator, giving him a few weeks to explain to Congress w...

President Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed that his administration has given Puerto Rico $91 billion in relief funds after Hurricanes Irma and Maria devastated the island in 2017. But a new report maintains that the island has received only $12.6 billion, NBC News reported. According to data analyzed by Puerto Rico’s top research think tank, the...

The House on Friday passed a $19 billion disaster aid bill that would deliver long-sought relief to farmers, victims of hurricanes and floods, and rebuild southern military bases, as Democrats try to dislodge the legislation from a Senate logjam over aid to hurricane-slammed Puerto Rico. The measure passed by a 257-150 vote over the opposition of m...

President Donald Trump is distorting reality when it comes to disaster aid for hurricane-stricken Puerto Rico....In a flurry of angry tweets Tuesday, he argues the U.S. territory has gotten more than its fair share of money to rebuild after Hurricane Maria devastated the island in September 2017....He asserts the territory had already received $91 ...