COAMO, Puerto Rico — It took only minutes for Hurricane Maria to kill power to the Puerto Rican town of Coamo, cracking wooden poles, snapping power lines and hurling transformers to the ground.
For months, residents begged Puerto Rico's power company and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to bring back their electricity, with few results.
So the people of this town of 40,000 high in the mountains of southern Puerto Rico have started restoring power on their own, pulling power lines from undergrowth and digging holes for wooden posts in a do-it-yourself effort to solve a small part of the United States' longest-running power outage.
"If we don't do this, we'll be without power until summer," said Vice Mayor Edgardo Vazquez, who is using hand-drawn maps to organize a brigade that includes teachers, handymen, a postal worker and an accountant, backed by municipal workers with professional equipment, tools and experience in light electrical work.
Read more: https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/p...ix-their-town-s-power-grid-their-bare-n845421
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