puerto rico and the princess of darkness

adventures in failing upward

once upon a time in the city of angels, there lived a princess of darkness whose strange magic was such that the calamity and failure that would end many a career instead advanced hers, failing ever upward until she arrived (in a hurry) upon the shores of la isla del encanto, home to certain internet felines of questionable goodness.

pray for us.

this does not look good.

for those not conversant in puerto rico’s utilities, LUMA is the private company that assumed control and operation of puerto rico’s much beleaguered power grid back in june of 2020 (during the heady days of lockdown). operations began a year later in 2021. PREPA, who until then had run this clownshow of underinvestment, duct tape, and chewing gum was well past corrupt and $9 billion in debt and the grid (even after incredible outside investment after maria) showed it. puerto rico has unrelaiable electricity the likes of which one rarely sees in the first world with blackouts being common, easy to trigger, and often large and durable. having a million people lose power “because rain” is not uncommon and it can take days to fix.

LUMA has not helped (though nor have they been helped by linemen and grid workers angry about their PREPA pensions who have a charming habit of blowing substations ahead of holidays to show their displeasure).

if you don’t have a generator, you’re likely to deal with “power out” about 28 hours a year (about 15X the mainland) in just a normal (non hurricane) year and 2-3 “major events” of widespread million plus homes down from some manner of cascading failure. hey, but at least electricity is ~35c/kwh in a place where you need AC most of the year…

we have a running joke here that you’re not allowed to start any criticism of what’s going on with “you would think” and if you do, you have to buy a round of drinks, so i won’t go there, but “one might ponder” if one were an pondering sort of person, who LUMA might hire to help remedy this situation.

janisse quiñones does not look like a step in that direction. in fact, she looks like a flying leap right out of the frying pan and into the malibu fires.

to call her track record “checkered” would burst the bounds of charitable. to call it “downright frightening” is still deep into understatement.

(alas, to call it “continuity at LUMA” might be all too on the nose)

LUMA seriously just hired the woman who was in charge of the LA department of water and fire and whose gross negligence left the fire hydrants broken and the santa ynes resevoir empty during the malibu fires and who, prior to that, was at pacific gas & electric (PG&E) as a senior vice president between 2021 to 2023. PG&E, of course, went bankrupt over liability for several massive wildfires in california because, wait for it, they were not maintaining their lines properly or clearing vegetation.

she’s going to run the triple wobbly grid on puerto rico. the one with massive deferred maintenance and lines running through rainforest jungle that no one cuts the vegetation around.

one can only imagine the interview…

she was pulling down $750k in LA. i shudder to think what you are likely paying her.

i knew LUMA hated us, but i had no idea how badly.

for real, you could not find a better candidate to run the puerto rico electrical grid?

wile e coyote would be an improvement.

this woman’s superpower appears to be neglecting systems until there’s a catastrophe and then failing upward.

it’s a matter of no small astonishment to me that LUMA literally hired her the same day that she resigned in LA once the courts ruled against LADWP seeking dismissal of the case against them for negligence.

this means the case, and therefore discovery, is going to go ahead. resigning and fleeing about as far as one could and still be in the US (guam is a bit further, but may not have had any openings) is quite a reaction thereto. i suspect her name is pretty much “mud” out on the west coast these days.

and they are far from the only ones interested.

why PR always has to be the scupper for these rejects is a 100 year old question dating back to FDR sending rexford tugwell (who was so embarrassingly communist that not even roosevelt could keep him around) down to be our governor general and rewrite our constitution into the horror that plagues us today.

but it’s definitely a thing.

this is where you send those too connected to punish but too dangerously incompetent to have anywhere near you.

and jackie has now failed south and become our problem.

sigh.

it’s enough to drive you to drink.