Fuel distribution has been ‘embargoed’

A coalition of Puerto Rico telecommunication companies has asked President Donald Trump for the Federal Government and Department of Defense to take over logistics and distribution of fuel because it represents a ‘present and clear danger’ for security in the hurricane-ravaged U.S. territory.

Hurricane María, which hit Puerto Rico a week ago with Category 4 force, brought to the ground the island’s power grid and now all power is done through diesel and gasoline mobile generators used by hospitals, restaurants, homes and telcomms to power their antennas.Overall, over 90% of the Puerto Rican territory is without cellular network coverage and, after a week of the hurricane, thousands of people just have not been able to check if their families and loved ones are alive. Lack of reliable communication has also been cited by authorities as the single biggest challenge they face to execute rescue and recovery plans.In their letter to Trump, the Telecommunications Industry Alliance (‘PRTIA’, or ‘APT’ by its Spanish acronym) says there’s a ‘present and clear danger to our homeland security resulting from the collapse of the vital telecommunications infrastructure serving 3.5 million Americans residing in Puerto Rico’.’Our infrastructure was devastated by Hurricane Maria and will completely collapse if we don’t get fuel to the emergency generators that provide electricity to telecommunications equipment at central offices, cellular and microwave network towers and submarine cable facilities. Yesterday one of the submarine cable landing offices went dark for a moment due to lack of fuel. The whole telecommunications network may go dark within a day, hampering relief efforts and eliminating all communications with federal agencies that is needed to communicate among themselves and the public. We need your help to direct the logistics required to distribute fuel and provide security to our infrastructure’, they also said.In an echo of what other trade organizations have declared in the days since the hurricane, the PRTIA said that they ‘are at the mercy of an equally important crisis of command and control that is sapping our energies to go begging every day for fuel to last another day’.’For that we need your help to direct FEMA and the Secretary of Defense to coordinate with us an affective logistics program to distribute fuel to the critical telecommunications infrastructure’.The group said they brought the matter before FCC Chairman Ajit V. Pai and he was ‘helpful’ but it is not enough.’We need a command and control structure that coordinates the logistics between the fuel distributors that have diesel, the tank trucks with drivers to deliver the diesel, and the telecommunications companies that receive them. We also need to set aside exclusive gasoline stations in strategic points throughout the Island were our 3,000+ technicians can fill with gasoline their vehicles tanks. The fuel is available, but the distribution process is non-existent and/or embargoed. In addition to the logistics of delivering fuel, we need security. The fuel trucks are being hijacked and scant fuel we have is being stolen from the emergency power plants. The current situation of total chaos will lead to a total blackout of communications if not controlled today’, they added.They finished noting that if the fuel distribution and telecommunications crisis is not averted, the Federal Government may face ‘a humanitarian and political crisis like America has never seen’ in the form of an ‘exodus’ in the coming weeks of between 500,000 and a million residents of Puerto Rico who, being United States citizens, can freely move to any state of the Union.[naviga:img embed-content-articleid=’627078584′ embed-content-groupid=’593030471′ embed-content-id=’627078584′ embed-content-imgalign=’none’ embed-content-index=’0′ embed-content-type=’FILE’ height=’240px’ src=» style=’width:100%;’ width=’360px’ /]