TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) – More than 40 percent of Puerto Rico’s power customers remain in the dark, nearly four months after Category 4 Hurricane Maria hit the island.
On Wednesday morning, 18 Tampa Electric Company workers flew out of Tampa International Airport headed to Puerto Rico to help with the power restoration there.
“I don’t know what to expect,” said Michael Davis, TECO employee.
Davis has been on these kind of restoration trips before. But says this time is different, these people have been without power for months. “They don’t have the basic things they need to live,” said Davis.
The TECO team will be away from their families for at least six weeks, but they say it is worth it to help.
“The feeling we get it is hard to explain. They get their power back on, they are so grateful for what they get and it is just unreal, and it gives us the feeling that we have accomplished something in live,” said Ronald Wright, TECO employee.
The workers will join the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA), FEMA and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), which have had incident Florida management teams on the island since early December completing damage assessments of Puerto Rico’s energy grid and developing a coordinated restoration plan.
Hurricane Maria caused an estimated $95 billion in damage and killed dozens of people.
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