Preliminary evaluations show Hurricane Fiona damaged 50 percent of transmission lines and distribution feeders across Puerto Rico as hundreds of thousands remain without power or water service almost two weeks after the storm hit, officials said Thursday.

As Hurricane Fiona bore down on Puerto Rico two weeks ago, the U.S.-imposed fiscal control board and the U.S.-based judge who handles the public electric utility’s debt restructuring deal forced Puerto Rican lawyers to file motions even as the archipelago was experiencing an island-wide blackout.

Since Hurricane Fiona swept over Puerto Rico on Sunday, residents along the southern coast have seen little state or federal aid in their communities, forcing them to survive mostly on their own.

In the five years since Hurricane María tore through their country, the people of Puerto Rico have made efforts to rebuild in hopes that they would be ready for the next disaster. Hurricane Fiona, a Category 1 storm that swept through the island on Sunday, has shattered such hopes.

The eye of newly formed Hurricane Fiona neared Puerto Rico’s south coast on Sunday. already causing an island-wide power blackout and threatening to dump “historic” levels of rain.

Kenneth Chesebro, a Harvard-trained lawyer accused of crafting former President Donald Trump’s fake elector strategy to overturn the results of the 2020 election, has kept a “low profile” since the attack on the U.S. Capitol in January 2021, having moved to Puerto Rico last year.

On Monday, U.S. Energy Sec. Jennifer Granholm announced a $453.3 million commitment to finance rooftop solar panels and battery systems for Puerto Rico’s most vulnerable communities.

As the effects of climate change intensify across the Caribbean, it will only lead to more extreme weather events that will in turn force Puerto Ricans out of the places they once considered “safe” and make many reconsider their life plans.

With this year’s hurricane season only a few days away, most forecasters have predicted a fairly “normal” season with an average of 14 named storms, seven hurricanes, and three of those reaching Category 3 or above—though experts still warn to prepare for the worst.

With rising temperatures and the increasing threat of tropical storms due to climate change menacing Puerto Rico, many fear the islands’ access to electrical power will only worsen under privatization.

As Puerto Rico moves toward its stated goal of 100 percent renewable energy by 2050, there are still gigantic leaps that need to be taken if it plans to reach that target date, though it is becoming increasingly unlikely that such monumental steps will be taken.

A U.S. government study has determined that with little room on the island for large-scale solar farms or wind generators, Puerto Rico should aim to reach its clean-energy goals by installing solar panels on all suitable rooftops, along with airports, brownfields, and industrial areas.

Despite ample federal funding, less than one percent of the federal money slated for the island’s public water utility corporation since 2018 has been set aside to buy generators for water pumps. Local officials instead have been forced to rely on a patchwork supply of emergency units.

A group of 16 municipalities filed a lawsuit on November 22 against multiple Big Oil companies for downplaying the risks of their fossil-fuel products on climate change.

Senior editor Hector Luis Alamo gives a review of some of the most interesting and important things he saw, read, and heard over the past week.

On the same day it was set to expire, the Puerto Rico Public-Private Alliances granted LUMA Energy an extension of its provisional contract that will only end once the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority’s debt restructuring is completed.

Puerto Ricans will likely spend this Christmas without their time-honored tradition of eating plantains with dinner, after Hurricane Fiona destroyed 80 percent of the island’s plantain and banana crops in September.

The U.S. government announced Tuesday that it will provide Puerto Rico with temporary electric generation via barges to help in restoring the island’s storm-devastated power grid and ease repeated widespread outages.

The announcement, made on Friday, is part of the Biden administration’s effort to directly address the disproportionate impacts of pollution that have existed for decades in many low-income communities and communities of color.

The Department of Transportation and Public Works offered incomplete data on the bridges damaged by Hurricane Fiona and does not say whether there was a monitoring plan for those that were in a vulnerable condition before the storm.

Puerto Rico’s Energy Bureau announced Thursday that it will investigate how a private company has handled complaints about electric bills after Hurricane Fiona knocked power out to the entire island.