Los chavos de María

An environment of hostility, pressure, workplace harassment, persecution, intimidation and discrimination based on age and gender seems to reign in the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Office of External Affairs in Puerto Rico, according to documented incidents since 2019 by at least 10 employees, most of them women. The Center for Investigative Journalism (CPI, in Spanish) […]

Ten of the 20 towns in Puerto Rico that have received a lower percentage of the recovery funds approved by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) had new mayors taking office in January. The most notorious case is Vieques, which had only received 4.9% of the $51.3 million that FEMA obligated before the November 2020 […]

When her children were studying at the Santiago Iglesias Pantín Elementary School in Barrio Obrero, Aileen Morales had to carry them on her back every time the streets next to Caño Martín Peña were flooded. She did not want them to arrive at their classrooms with their legs wet or with the stench caused by […]

Two of the major projects after Hurricane Maria, carried out by the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), would involve periodic renourishment of San Juan’s famous beaches in Condado and Ocean Park with sand, along with a breakwater field. The federal agency also proposes to place stone revetment along a mile of coastline in Rincón. […]

After exhausting all efforts to obtain a list of vulnerable, destroyed and reopened bridges after Hurricane María from the Highways and Transportation Authority (ACT, in Spanish), the Center for Investigative Journalism (CPI, in Spanish) filed a request for mandamus from the court to force the agency to fulfill its duty of providing access to this […]

The death of a teenager in Vieques whose relatives recounted how she died due to lack of medical services there, unleashed the rage of the residents of Isla Nena a week ago. The Viequenses brought cement blocks to the public square, as a protest art installation of sorts, demanding the construction of a proper hospital […]

Reconstruction efforts for recreational and sporting events fail to get off the ground. In 30 months, only 4% of the obligated funds for this category have been disbursed.

The audit of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) published Sept. 30, 2019 details how two of its districts — Hunstville and Jacksonville — failed to supervise and review the contracts, invoices and work performed by companies Fluor Enterprises and PowerSecure in Puerto Rico. These failures led to the U.S. Corps of Engineers paying $20.9 million to Fluor Enterprises and $29.2 million to PowerSecure.