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99% Invisible

A Year in the Dark

99% Invisible

SiriusXM Podcasts and Roman Mars

Design, Arts

4.827.5K Ratings

🗓️ 31 October 2018

⏱️ 32 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The almost year-long struggle to get power working on the island and the utility worker who became a Puerto Rican folk hero.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

This is 99% invisible. I'm Katie Mingle filling in for Roman Mars.

0:05.2

In the early morning of September 20th, 2017,

0:11.2

a category 4 hurricane hit the island of Puerto Rico.

0:15.7

Hurricane Maria slamming into the island and as you heard, one official saying the island

0:20.4

is destroyed.

0:21.4

The first category 4 storm to strike Puerto Rico in 85 years.

0:25.0

Power lines are down.

0:27.0

Streets are impassable.

0:28.6

Many roads are flooded.

0:31.0

Maria was a beast of a hurricane, the strongest one to hit the island since

0:36.0

1932. The wind was blowing 155 miles an hour which is very close to being a category 5 and it didn't just hit one

0:47.3

stretch of the coast it actually moved across the whole island ripping up everything in its path.

0:54.4

You know, brush everywhere, trees down, power lines down, obviously everywhere,

1:00.4

you know, the entire island in the dark.

1:03.0

That's Danielle Alarcon.

1:05.0

He spent some time reporting in Puerto Rico after the storm

1:08.0

and wrote an article about it for Wired magazine.

1:11.0

The next morning people wake up, they go out of their houses, their apartments, they look out

1:16.4

in the streets to survey the damage and start trying to make sense of what they're seeing in front of them, you know?

1:24.0

And one of the people out there that day, driving around in a state of utter shock was a guy named Jorge Bracero.

1:35.0

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

1:37.0

God, please.

...

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